An Auditory Neurophysiological Approach for Music Perception

Abstract

The present paper discusses basic evidence indicating that the brain creates sound sensation which is essential for music perception. Since the 19th century, it has been a well-known fact in the auditory psychology that we often perceive sounds which do not correspond to any physical frequency components (spectrum) of objective sounds. This enables us to enjoy music. For example, when we add several successively higher harmonics, we acquire the pitch sensation of a low-frequency fundamental which does not exist in the sound, called the “missing fundamental”. Here, we briefly overview previously found psychological facts in order to understand the phenomenon easily and show some neurophysiological findings related to pitch extraction mechanisms for the missing fundamental in the central auditory system. We also examined whether the temporally created pitch (temporal pitch) known as the missing fundamental is handled by the same neuron in the primary auditory cortex that processes the spectrally created pitch (place pitch) based on frequency components. The findings suggest that temporal pitch appears to be processed together with place pitch by the same neuron in the primary auditory cortex. The data agree well with the various psychological evidence. © 1996, The Japan Society of Logopedics and Phoniatrics. All rights reserved.