Abstract
Pitch is a crucial feature of auditory perception. It conveys information about melody and harmony in music, and conveys prosodic and (in tone languages) lexical information in speech. Although pitch has been studied formally for many decades, there still remains considerable uncertainty regarding how frequency and pitch information is coded and represented in the auditory periphery. This uncertainty means it is unclear whether and how pitch information can best be conveyed via cochlear implants. Cochlear-implant users have been shown to be sensitive to changes in the place of stimulation within the cochlea (“place” pitch) and to changes in the pulse rate presented to the electrode (“rate” pitch), at least up to rates of around 300 Hz. Place pitch in cochlear implants is probably best compared to “brightness” and rate pitch has most in common with the relatively weak pitch produced by temporal-envelope fluctuations in normal-hearing listeners. Neither type of pitch seems to provide the salient and accurate pitch sensations associated with normal hearing. Studies in both normal-hearing listeners and cochlear-implant users will be reviewed to shed light on the mechanisms of pitch perception and on the challenges involved in restoring pitch to cochlear-implant users. [Work supported by NIH grant R01DC005216.]
Published Version
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