Envelope and temporal fine structure exist at three distinct processing levels
Evidence
Within the healthy cochlea, broadband sounds are decomposed into narrowband signals, each of which can be considered as a relatively slowly varying envelope (ENV) imposed on a rapidly oscillating carrier (the temporal fine structure, TFS). Information about ENV and TFS is conveyed in the timing and short-term rate of nerve spikes in the auditory nerve (Joris and Yin 1992 ). Following Moore ( 2014 ), a distinction is made between the physical ENV and TFS of the input signal (ENVp and TFSp ), the ENV and TFS at a given place on the basilar membrane (ENVBM and TFSBM ), and the neural representation of ENVBM and TFSBM (ENVn and TFSn ). — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 794
Categorization
- DEFINE: Clarifies the three-tier ENV/TFS framework distinguishing physical signal, basilar-membrane representation, and neural encoding.
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader interest in where acoustics becomes neural coding — parallels pitch perception and sound segregation mechanisms. — connects to: Envelope and fine structure are mathematically orthogonal but not perceptually independent; Envelope and fine structure cues can be swapped across tokens to isolate their roles; Fine-structure cues carry Mandarin tone perception, not envelope cues — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 3388 (+2 more)
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 794