Across-species differences in pitch perception are consistent with differences in cochlear filtering

Walker, Kerry M M, University of Oxford

Gonzalez, Ray, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Kang, Joe Z, University of Oxford

McDermott, Josh H, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

King, Andrew J, University of Oxford, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5180-7179

kerry.walker@stcatz.ox.ac.uk

Published Mar 15, 2019 on Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.95j80kv

Cite this dataset

Walker, Kerry M M et al. (2019). Across-species differences in pitch perception are consistent with differences in cochlear filtering [Dataset]. Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.95j80kv

Abstract

Pitch perception is critical for recognizing speech, music and animal vocalizations, but its neurobiological basis remains unsettled, in part because of divergent results across species. We investigated whether species-specific differences exist in the cues used to perceive pitch and whether these can be accounted for by differences in the auditory periphery. Ferrets accurately generalized pitch discriminations to untrained stimuli whenever temporal envelope cues were robust in the probe sounds, but not when resolved harmonics were the main available cue. By contrast, human listeners exhibited the opposite pattern of results on an analogous task, consistent with previous studies. Simulated cochlear responses in the two species suggest that differences in the relative salience of the two pitch cues can be attributed to differences in cochlear filter bandwidths. The results support the view that cross-species variation in pitch perception reflects the constraints of estimating a sound’s fundamental frequency given species-specific cochlear tuning.

Usage notes

Psychophysical Scores

This is a Matlab formatted data file generated using Matlab version 2015a. It contains the following variables. ferretscores260 – a 3x6 matrix of the percent correct scores for 3 ferrets (rows) on trials in which one of 6 stimuli (columns) were presented. The ‘260’ in the variable names indicates that the stimuli were presented with a reference of 260Hz. ferretscores707 – a 4x6 matrix of the percent correct scores for 4 ferrets (rows) on trials in which one of 6 stimuli (columns) were presented. The ‘707’ in the variable names indicates that the stimuli were presented with a reference of 707Hz. humanscores - a 16x6 matrix of the percent correct scores for 16 human subjects (rows) on trials in which one of 6 stimuli (columns) were presented. stimuli – a cell array of labels describing the 6 stimuli in the columns of ferretscores260, ferretscores707, and humanscores.

PsychophysicalScores.mat

Ferret Stimuli

Wav files of stimuli used for ferret behavioural testing

ferretStimuli.zip

Human Stimuli

Wav files of stimuli used for human behavioural testing

humanStimuli.zip

Funding

Wellcome Trust, Award: Enhancement Award

Wellcome Trust, Award: WT076508AIA

Wellcome Trust, Award: WT108369/Z/2015/Z

James S. McDonnell Foundation, Award: Scholar Award

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Award: BB/M010929/1

University of Oxford, Award: DPAG Early Career Fellowship