Humans ‘can distinguish a tune at higher pitches than thought’
April 26th, 2011 - 2:31 pm ICT by ANILondon, April 26 (ANI): Previous studies have shown that humans can’t distinguish melodies whose notes have a fundamental tone above 5 kHz.
At frequencies above 5 kHz, it was thought that the rapidly cycling sound wave was too fast for the auditory nerve to cope with.
Now, Andrew Oxenham and his colleagues at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis have found that humans can pick out a tune at a much higher pitch than previously thought, reports New Scientist.
The researchers asked six students whether two four-note melodies were identical or not.
They then took a fundamental tone pitched below 5 kHz and digitally filtered it to leave just the overtones above 6 kHz.
The researchers found that the volunteers were able to distinguish the melodies.
There are many potential explanations for the result, according to Oxenham.
If pitch perception is learned through exposure to melodies, it may be possible to recognize a tune even when the fundamental tones are absent, he said.
And melodies are rarely, if ever, composed with fundamental tones above 5 kHz, so the brain may be unable to recognize this unfamiliar class of melodies, he added.
The findings appear in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (ANI)
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