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Neuroscience

Finding the missing fundamental

Nature volume 436, pages 1093–1094 (2005)Cite this article

The whole orchestra tunes up to an A note from the oboe — but how do our brains tell that all the different sounds are the same pitch? The discovery of pitch-sensitive neurons provides some clues.

Psychologists are intrigued by the problem of perceptual constancy: essentially, how do we perceive the environment as remaining stable despite huge variability in the inputs reaching our senses? This general question is especially puzzling in the case of pitch, because we have known since the nineteenth century2 that the pitch of a sound typically corresponds to its fundamental vibrational frequency — even if that frequency is physically absent in the sound reaching our ears. Sounds that have pitch arise from objects that vibrate in a periodic manner, such as columns of air in pipes or the vocal cords (as opposed to aperiodic sounds like wind or rushing water). As Pythagoras knew, if you pluck a string, it will vibrate in its entire extent, as well as in halves, thirds and so on, and each of those vibrational modes will result in a separate harmonic frequency. Yet we usually perceive the pitch as corresponding to the lowest of these, which is the fundamental3. For a simple demonstration of the ‘missing fundamental’ effect, pick up a phone. Most telephone lines cut off the lower frequencies, resulting in a slightly tinny sound, yet the fundamental pitch does not change; a male voice does not sound like Mickey Mouse. The brain seems to figure out the missing pitch.

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  1. Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, 3801 University Street, Montreal, H3A 2B4, Quebec, Canada

    Robert J. Zatorre

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  1. Robert J. Zatorre
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Zatorre, R. Finding the missing fundamental. Nature 436, 1093–1094 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/4361093a

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