Searching for the time constant of neural pitch extraction

Abstract

Multichannel, auditory models have been repeatedly used to explain many aspects of human pitch perception. Among the most successful ones are models where pitch is estimated based on an analysis of periodicity in the simulated auditory-nerve firing. This periodicity analysis is typically implemented as a running autocorrelation, i.e., the autocorrelation is calculated within a temporal window which is shifted along the time axis. The window was suggested to have an exponential decay with time-constant estimates between 1.5 and 100 ms. The window length determines the minimal integration time of pitch extraction. The present experiments are designed to quantify the temporal window of pitch extraction using regular-interval noises (RINs). RINs were generated by concatenating equal-duration noise samples which produce a pitch corresponding to the reciprocal of the sample duration when the samples are identical (periodic noise). When the samples are independent, the stimulus is Gaussian noise and produces no pitch. Using RIN stimuli where periodic portions interchange with aperiodic portions, it is shown that the temporal window of pitch extraction cannot be modeled using a single time constant but that the size of the temporal window depends on the pitch itself.