Reformatted from: FREQUENCY ANALYSIS AND PERIODICITY DETECTION IN HEARING

The sensation of pitch appears normally to arise from the operation of a multiplicity of mechanisms. It is not readily possible to distinguish their relative contributions and it would be an advantage to be able to study an effect which was dependent on the operation of only one type of mediation. The aim of the present experiments was to arrive at and to examine a situation in which only a neural mechanism contributed to the sensation. Auditory lateralization can be made to depend only on the temporal difference between the stimuli applied to the two ears. When this condition is obtained the lateralization sensation is due only to the operation of a neural mechanism, since peripheral analysis cannot account for the effects observed. By examining the sensation of pitch which can be associated with this type of lateralization, it seems possible to arrange for a pitch sensation to be similarly independent of the action of peripheral analysis.