Cats can detect repeated noise stimuli.
We assessed the ability of cats to detect repeated noise (RN), a stimulus generated by seamlessly presenting short segments of white noise in a continuous loop, in a modified go-nogo task. A recent study of the gerbil suggested that animals might have an extremely limited ability to detect RN compared to human subjects. We find that cats can discriminate RN from continuous noise with reasonable accuracy until the period length of the RN sequence reaches 450-500 ms. This is slightly longer than the maximum detectable RN period length found in gerbils, but falls far short of human performance.
Frey
Hans Peter
HP
Institute of Neuroinformatics, University/ETH Zürich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zürich, Switzerland.
Kaernbach
Christian
C
König
Peter
P
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D000818:Animals; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D002415:Cats / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D009622:Noise