Improving psychoacoustical tuning curves.

Abstract

The probe signal in psychoacoustical tuning curves stimulates more than one neuron, even when presented at low levels. The subject can "listen" to neurons with characteristic frequencies away from the nominal probe frequency and optimize performance. This "off-frequency listening" can account for much of the discrepancy in the sharpness of tuning between psychoacoustical tuning curves obtained in forward masking and neurophysiological tuning curves. By adding a band-reject noise, centred on the probe frequency, to limit off-frequency listening, results in close agreement with the neurophysiological data can be produced.