title: A perceptual pitch boundary in a non-human primate.
abstract: Pitch is an auditory percept critical to the perception of music and speech, and for these harmonic sounds, pitch is closely related to the repetition rate of the acoustic wave. This paper reports a test of the assumption that non-human primates and especially rhesus monkeys perceive the pitch of these harmonic sounds much as humans do. A new procedure was developed to train macaques to discriminate the pitch of harmonic sounds and thereby demonstrate that the lower limit for pitch perception in macaques is close to 30 Hz, as it is in humans. Moreover, when the phases of successive harmonics are alternated to cause a pseudo-doubling of the repetition rate, the lower pitch boundary in macaques decreases substantially, as it does in humans. The results suggest that both species use neural firing times to discriminate pitch, at least for sounds with relatively low repetition rates.
authors.affiliation: Auditory Group, Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne UK ; Department of Experimental Psychology, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Oxford Oxford, UK.
authors.forename: Olivier
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Joly
authors.affiliation: Auditory Group, Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne UK.
authors.forename: Simon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Baumann
authors.affiliation: Auditory Group, Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne UK.
authors.forename: Colline
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Poirier
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, University of Cambridge, Cambridge UK.
authors.forename: Roy D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Patterson
authors.affiliation: Auditory Group, Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne UK.
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Thiele
authors.affiliation: Auditory Group, Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne UK ; University College London London, UK.
authors.forename: Timothy D
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: Griffiths
keywords: auditory perception; harmonic sounds; monkey model; pitch discrimination; psychophysics