Journal
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
Volume 29, Issue 24, Pages 7718-7722Publisher
SOC NEUROSCIENCE
DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0157-09.2009
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Pitch perception is critical for the perception of speech and music, for object identification, and for auditory scene analysis, whereby representations are derived for each sounding object in the environment from the complex sound wave that reaches the ears. The perceived pitch of a complex sound corresponds to its fundamental frequency. However, removal of energy at the fundamental does not alter the pitch because adults use the harmonics to derive the pitch (Bendor and Wang, 2005; Trainor, 2008). Although sound frequency is represented subcortically, the integration of harmonics into a representation of pitch does not occur until auditory cortex (Bendor and Wang, 2005). Given that auditory cortex is immature in young infants, we examined the development of cortical representations for pitch by measuring electrophysiological (EEG) responses to pitch changes that required processing the pitch of the missing fundamental. Adults and infants 4 months and older showed a mismatch negativity response to these pitch changes, but 3-month-old infants did not. Thus, cortical representations of the pitch of the missing fundamental emerge between 3 and 4 months of age, indicating that there is a profound change in auditory perception for pitch in early infancy.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available