IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v416y2002i6876d10.1038_416087a.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Chimaeric sounds reveal dichotomies in auditory perception

Author

Listed:
  • Zachary M. Smith

    (Eaton-Peabody Laboratory, Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary
    Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

  • Bertrand Delgutte

    (Eaton-Peabody Laboratory, Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary
    Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

  • Andrew J. Oxenham

    (Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Abstract

By Fourier's theorem1, signals can be decomposed into a sum of sinusoids of different frequencies. This is especially relevant for hearing, because the inner ear performs a form of mechanical Fourier transform by mapping frequencies along the length of the cochlear partition. An alternative signal decomposition, originated by Hilbert2, is to factor a signal into the product of a slowly varying envelope and a rapidly varying fine time structure. Neurons in the auditory brainstem3,4,5,6 sensitive to these features have been found in mammalian physiological studies. To investigate the relative perceptual importance of envelope and fine structure, we synthesized stimuli that we call ‘auditory chimaeras’, which have the envelope of one sound and the fine structure of another. Here we show that the envelope is most important for speech reception, and the fine structure is most important for pitch perception and sound localization. When the two features are in conflict, the sound of speech is heard at a location determined by the fine structure, but the words are identified according to the envelope. This finding reveals a possible acoustic basis for the hypothesized ‘what’ and ‘where’ pathways in the auditory cortex7,8,9,10.

Suggested Citation

  • Zachary M. Smith & Bertrand Delgutte & Andrew J. Oxenham, 2002. "Chimaeric sounds reveal dichotomies in auditory perception," Nature, Nature, vol. 416(6876), pages 87-90, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:416:y:2002:i:6876:d:10.1038_416087a
    DOI: 10.1038/416087a
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/416087a
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/416087a?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sierra Broussard & Gregory Hickok & Kourosh Saberi, 2017. "Robustness of speech intelligibility at moderate levels of spectral degradation," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(7), pages 1-14, July.
    2. Mina Sadeghi & Xiu Zhai & Ian H Stevenson & Monty A Escabí, 2019. "A neural ensemble correlation code for sound category identification," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(10), pages 1-41, October.
    3. Na Yu & Ginette Hupé & Charles Garfinkle & John E Lewis & André Longtin, 2012. "Coding Conspecific Identity and Motion in the Electric Sense," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(7), pages 1-16, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:416:y:2002:i:6876:d:10.1038_416087a. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.