Complex high-frequency tones evoke pitch where pure tones fail above 6 kHz.

Evidence

Oxenham et al. ( 2011 ) showed that complex tones whose audible harmonics all fall above 6 kHz can evoke a robust sense of pitch and musical interval, but high-frequency pure tones did not, even though the just noticeable difference for the latter was less than 1.5 %. They concluded either that there is sufficient phase-locking present at high frequencies to derive complex musical pitch, or that a complex pitch can be derived in the absence of phase locking. Pertaining to this, Moore and Ernst ( 2012 ) reported DLFs for center frequencies from 2 to 14 kHz that were consistent with the idea that there is a transition from a temporal to a place mechanism at about 8 kHz, rather than at 4–5 kHz, as commonly assumed. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5396

Categorization

• QUESTION: The gap between complex and pure tone pitch above 6 kHz suggests place-based (spectral) mechanisms may carry musical pitch — worth investigating how harmonic structure feeds place coding.