Spike train statistics for consonant and dissonant musical accords in a simple auditory sensory model

Abstract

The phenomena of dissonance and consonance in a simple auditory sensory model composed of three neurons are considered. Two of them, here so-called sensory neurons, are driven by noise and subthreshold periodic signals with different ratio of frequencies, and its outputs plus noise are applied synaptically to a third neuron, so-called interneuron. We present a theoretical analysis with a probabilistic approach to investigate the interspike intervals statistics of the spike train generated by the interneuron. We find that tones with frequency ratios that are considered consonant by musicians produce at the third neuron inter-firing intervals statistics densities that are very distinctive from densities obtained using tones with ratios that are known to be dissonant. In other words, at the output of the interneuron, inharmonious signals give rise to blurry spike trains, while the harmonious signals produce more regular, less noisy, spike trains. Theoretical results are compared with numerical simulations. © 2010 The American Physical Society.