Journal
NEUROSCIENCE LETTERS
Volume 290, Issue 1, Pages 66-70Publisher
ELSEVIER IRELAND LTD
DOI: 10.1016/S0304-3940(00)01290-8
Keywords
frequency discrimination; complex sounds; human; auditory event-related potentials; mismatch negativity; P3a; automatic processing
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The pitch of a spectrally rich sound is known to be more easily perceived than that of a sinusoidal tone. The present study compared the importance of spectral complexity and sound duration in facilitated pitch discrimination. The mismatch negativity (MMN), which reflects automatic neural discrimination, was recorded to a 2.5% pitch change in pure tones with only one sinusoidal frequency component (500 Hz) and in spectrally rich tones with three (500-1500 Hz) and five (500-2500 Hz) harmonic partials. During the recordings, subjects concentrated on watching a silent movie. In separate blocks, stimuli were of 100 and 250 ms in duration. The MMN amplitude was enhanced with both spectrally rich sounds when compared with pure tones. The prolonged sound duration did not significantly enhance the MMN. This suggests that increased spectral rather than temporal information facilitates pitch processing of spectrally rich sounds. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
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