Pitch of harmonic complex tones: rate and temporal coding of envelope repetition rate in inferior colliculus of unanesthetized rabbits

Article Article scientifique Article Pitch of harmonic complex tones: rate and temporal coding of envelope repetition rate in inferior colliculus of unanesthetized rabbits eng 2019 author Su Yaqing 928991 author Delgutte Bertrand 2468-2485 10.1152/jn.00512.2019 31664871 0022-3077 Harmonic complex tones (HCTs) found in speech, music, and animal vocalizations evoke strong pitch percepts at their fundamental frequencies. The strongest pitches are produced by HCTs that contain harmonics resolved by cochlear frequency analysis, but HCTs containing solely unresolved harmonics also evoke a weaker pitch at their envelope repetition rate (ERR). In the auditory periphery, neurons phase lock to the stimulus envelope, but this temporal representation of ERR degrades and gives way to rate codes along the ascending auditory pathway. To assess the role of the inferior colliculus (IC) in such transformations, we recorded IC neuron responses to HCT and sinusoidally modulated broadband noise (SAMN) with varying ERR from unanesthetized rabbits. Different interharmonic phase relationships of HCT were used to manipulate the temporal envelope without changing the power spectrum. Many IC neurons demonstrated band-pass rate tuning to ERR between 60 and 1,600 Hz for HCT and between 40 and 500 Hz for SAMN. The tuning was not related to the pure-tone best frequency of neurons but was dependent on the shape of the stimulus envelope, indicating a temporal rather than spectral origin. A phenomenological model suggests that the tuning may arise from peripheral temporal response patterns via synaptic inhibition. We also characterized temporal coding to ERR. Some IC neurons could phase lock to the stimulus envelope up to 900 Hz for either HCT or SAMN, but phase locking was weaker with SAMN. Together, the rate code and the temporal code represent a wide range of ERR, providing strong cues for the pitch of unresolved harmonics.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Envelope repetition rate (ERR) provides crucial cues for pitch perception of frequency components that are not individually resolved by the cochlea, but the neural representation of ERR for stimuli containing many harmonics is poorly characterized. Here we show that the pitch of stimuli with unresolved harmonics is represented by both a rate code and a temporal code for ERR in auditory midbrain neurons and propose possible underlying neural mechanisms with a computational model. Animals Electrophysiological Phenomena/physiology Female Inferior Colliculi/physiology Male Neurons/physiology Pitch Perception/physiology Rabbits true 894 Groupe Anne-Lise Giraud 939 Journal of Neurophysiology 122 6 8129f6bf-5b24-4962-848d-c28ecd77fab2 Article (Published version) Restricted jn.00512.2019.pdf 921334 application/pdf restrictedAccess

Title	Published in	Year	Views	Downloads

Robust rate-place coding of resolved components in harmonic and inharmonic complex tones in auditory midbrain	The Journal of Neuroscience	2020	213	185
Pitch of harmonic complex tones: rate and temporal coding of envelope repetition rate in inferior colliculus of unanesthetized rabbits	Journal of Neurophysiology	2019	205	0

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