1. Department of Neurobiology, Life Science Institute,
2. Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation, Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91904, Israel
3. Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, David Geffen School of Medicine,
4. Division of Neurosurgery, David Geffen School of Medicine and Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behaviour, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, California 90095, USA
5. Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel
6. Functional Neurosurgery Unit, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center and Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel

Correspondence to: I. Fried^4,6I. Nelken^1,2 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to I.N. (Email: israel@cc.huji.ac.il) or to I.F. (Email: ifried@mednet.ucla.edu).

Abstract

Just-noticeable differences of physical parameters are often limited by the resolution of the peripheral sensory apparatus. Thus, two-point discrimination in vision is limited by the size of individual photoreceptors. Frequency selectivity is a basic property of neurons in the mammalian auditory pathway^{1, 2}. However, just-noticeable differences of frequency are substantially smaller than the bandwidth of the peripheral sensors³. Here we report that frequency tuning in single neurons recorded from human auditory cortex in response to random-chord stimuli is far narrower than that typically described in any other mammalian species (besides bats), and substantially exceeds that attributed to the human auditory periphery. Interestingly, simple spectral filter models failed to predict the neuronal responses to natural stimuli, including speech and music. Thus, natural sounds engage additional processing mechanisms beyond the exquisite frequency tuning probed by the random-chord stimuli.

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