A weak musical pitch can exist without peripheral phase locking.

Evidence

The results showed that, on average, subjects selected similar frequencies in a musical interval adjustment task irrespective of whether the reference tone was a ZT or an equally salient pure tone. The adjusted frequencies were slightly flat in both cases. This might partly result from subjects’ bias towards a “just scale” with musical intervals corresponding to integer ratios of 6/5 and 3/2 for the minor third and the perfect fifth, respectively. If this was the only underlying reason, the “bias” should have been larger for the minor third than for the perfect fifth, which was not observed. The SDs of the musical interval adjustments were only slightly larger (a factor of 1.1–2.2) for the ZTs than for the PTs, with no increase in listening time. Thus, overall the results suggest that a weak musical pitch can exist in the absence of peripheral phase locking. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5420

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: Clarifies what ZT (Zwicker tone) and PT (pure tone) mean in contrast, and defines the just-scale bias concept.

Related

• Weak musical pitch perception can persist without peripheral phase locking. (similarity 0.92)
• Musically trained listeners judge ZT musical intervals accurately despite missing phase locking. (similarity 0.92)
• Simulation refractory periods do not capture real auditory phase-locking constraints (similarity 0.88)
• Auditory nerve phase locking fails at high frequencies, leaving only the place code (similarity 0.85)
• Zwicker tones produce pitch without peripheral phase locking. (similarity 0.85)
• Pitch of Zwicker tones is less precisely encoded than pure tones (similarity 0.85)
• Zwicker tones support accurate musical interval matching like pure tones (similarity 0.84)
• Phase invariance of pitch might arise from some neurons always entracking (similarity 0.83)
• Zwicker tone interval matches are as reliable as those for high-frequency pure tones (similarity 0.83)
• High-frequency pitch imprecision reflects unfamiliarity and place coding, not phase locking alone (similarity 0.82)
• Even noise without periodic waveforms can carry a weak sense of pitch. (similarity 0.82)
• Zwicker-tone interval adjustments are as accurate as pure-tone adjustments (similarity 0.82)
• Zwicker-tone pitch matches are more variable than pure-tone matches (similarity 0.82)
• Experienced listeners preserve octave judgment precision at 5 kHz where phase locking degrades. (similarity 0.81)
• Zwicker tone interval settings are slightly more variable than pure-tone matches. (similarity 0.81)