Zwicker tones have no cochlear mechanical or otoacoustic correlate.

Evidence

A ZT is a faint, decaying tonal percept that can arise following the presentation of a notched broadband noise and that can last up to 5–6 s. The pitch is always within the frequency range of the notch, and depends on the level of the noise and the width of the notch. Several findings indicate that ZTs are unlikely to be produced mechanically at the level of the cochlea. Normally, no otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) were found at the frequency corresponding to the pitch of the ZT, except in the rare case when a subject had a spontaneous OAE which could be made temporarily audible by a preceding notched noise (without increasing its physical level), and no beating was observed between ZTs and a soft physical tone (Krump 1993 ). Also, while low frequency tones at moderate to high levels can affect the level of evoked OAEs, they did not affect the ZT (Wiegrebe et al. 1995 ). Thus, no mechanical activity correlated to the ZT exists in the cochlea, and there is unlikely to be phase locking to ZTs in the auditory periphery. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5396

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Zwicker tones: faint decaying audible pitches inside a noise notch, with no matching cochlear mechanical activity.
• QUESTION: If ZTs have no peripheral phase locking yet produce pitch, this is direct evidence pitch can be central rather than temporal — worth exploring what the central mechanism could be.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5396
• XREF: connects to: The ear shows no mechanical ringing after a tone abruptly stops.; Pitch can exist with no tone heard at that frequency, unlike phantom tones; Zwicker tones produce no correlate in cochlear mechanical activity (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Zwicker tones produce no correlate in cochlear mechanical activity #corroborates (1.00)
• Zwicker tones arise centrally, not from cochlear mechanics or phase locking #expands (0.85) — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5399
• Zwicker tones produce pitch without peripheral phase locking. #expands (0.80) — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5392