Pitch selectivity in ferret auditory cortex
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Our perception of pitch – the tonal quality of a sound at a fundamental frequency (F0) – is essential for musical melody, vocal communication, and attending to a voice in a crowded room. Pitch is distinct from simple frequency tuning. Although pitch perception can arise from either harmonic spectral structure or temporal regularity, it remains unclear how individual neurons represent these distinct cues. We recorded spiking activity in hundreds of ferret auditory cortical neurons while systematically varying harmonic and temporal pitch cues. A subset of neurons represented F0 based on harmonic content, another subset on temporal periodicity, and a third population exhibited invariant pitch tuning across both cue classes. These findings provide the first evidence for specialized pitch neurons in non-primates, and demonstrate that mammalian auditory cortex employs dual spectral–temporal mechanisms for extracting F0.
Significance statement
Pitch allows us to enjoy music, understand speech, and follow voices in noisy settings, yet how the brain represents pitch remains a long-standing question. Pitch selective neurons have been identified previously only in primates, limiting our ability to investigate the neural of pitch. Here, we show that ferret auditory cortex also contains such neurons, which extract pitch from both harmonic structure and temporal periodicity. This discovery reveals that the brain uses dual, complementary strategies for encoding pitch.
