TY - JOUR T1 - Temporal correlates to monaural edge pitch in the distribution of inter-spike interval statistics in the auditory nerve JF - eneuro JO - eNeuro DO - 10.1523/ENEURO.0292-21.2021 SP - ENEURO.0292-21.2021 AU - Yi-Hsuan Li AU - Philip X. Joris Y1 - 2021/07/19 UR - http://www.eneuro.org/content/early/2021/07/19/ENEURO.0292-21.2021.abstract N2 - Pitch is a perceptual attribute enabling perception of melody. There is no consensus regarding the fundamental nature of pitch and its underlying neural code. A stimulus which has received much interest in psychophysical and computational studies is noise with a sharp spectral edge. High- or low-pass noise gives rise to a pitch near the edge frequency (“monaural edge pitch”, MEP). The simplicity of this stimulus, combined with its spectral and autocorrelation properties, make it an interesting stimulus to examine spectral versus temporal cues that could underly its pitch. We recorded responses of single auditory nerve fibers in chinchilla to MEP-stimuli varying in edge frequency. Temporal cues were examined with shuffled autocorrelogram (SAC) analysis. Correspondence between the population’s dominant interspike interval and reported pitch estimates was poor. A fuller analysis of the population interspike interval distribution, which incorporates not only the dominant but all intervals, results in good matches with behavioral results, but not for the entire range of edge frequencies that generates pitch. Finally, we also examined temporal structure over a slower time scale, intermediate between average firing rate and interspike intervals, by studying the SAC envelope. We found that, in response to a given MEP stimulus, this feature also systematically varies with edge frequency, across fibers with different characteristic frequency. Because neural mechanisms to extract envelope cues are well-established, and because this cue is not limited by coding of stimulus fine-structure, this newly identified slower temporal cue is a more plausible basis for pitch than cues based on fine-structure.Significance StatementA longstanding debate concerns the neural underpinnings of pitch, which is a label the brain computes for periodic sounds. Perceptual studies have not resolved whether pitch is based on spectral or temporal cues, or both. Because the neural processing requirements for temporal and place cues are very different, neurophysiological data can in principle resolve this debate. We studied responses of neurons in the auditory nerve to a simple aperiodic stimulus and examined candidate cues that may underly its unusual pitch. We find that fine temporal cues could potentially underly edge pitch, but only for a restricted range over which it is observed behaviorally. The data draw attention to a temporal cue at a slower time scale than is traditionally considered. ER -