O'Connor K N, Barruel P, Sutter M L
Center for Neuroscience, University of California, Davis 95616, USA.
J Comp Physiol A. 2000 Sep;186(9):903-12. doi: 10.1007/s003590000145.
How nonhuman species perceive the world is a biological question of fundamental importance, and has major significance for establishing the validity and possible limitations of animal models of human sensory function and perception. Studies in comparative hearing have revealed that almost all animals, including monkeys, are worse than humans at discriminating tone frequencies. Less is known, however, about comparative differences in discriminating more spectrally complex sounds. We compared the capacity of macaques and humans to discriminate complex sound patterns by measuring spectral-contrast sensitivity using stimuli having sine-modulated power spectra, analogous to sine-wave gratings used in visual studies. We found that the auditory system of the macaque is far less sensitive than the human system over the sine-profile frequency range tested (0.5-2.0 cycles/octave). These results indicate that rhesus macaques hear at least some spectrally complex sounds with less fidelity than do humans, and demonstrate large differences in primate species' abilities to process low-resolution spectral patterns. These results cannot be accounted for by traditional, narrowband peripheral filter models of spectral analysis, but instead, imply the involvement of a central, frequency integration process that may differ significantly across species.
非人类物种如何感知世界是一个具有根本重要性的生物学问题，对于确立人类感官功能和感知的动物模型的有效性及可能存在的局限性具有重大意义。比较听觉研究表明，几乎所有动物，包括猴子，在辨别音调频率方面都比人类差。然而，对于辨别频谱更复杂声音的比较差异，人们了解得较少。我们通过使用具有正弦调制功率谱的刺激来测量频谱对比度敏感性，类似于视觉研究中使用的正弦波光栅，比较了猕猴和人类辨别复杂声音模式的能力。我们发现，在测试的正弦轮廓频率范围（0.5 - 2.0 周期/倍频程）内，猕猴的听觉系统比人类系统的敏感性要低得多。这些结果表明，恒河猴听到至少一些频谱复杂声音的保真度低于人类，并证明了灵长类物种处理低分辨率频谱模式能力的巨大差异。这些结果不能用传统的窄带周边滤波器频谱分析模型来解释，相反，这意味着存在一个中枢频率整合过程，而这个过程在不同物种之间可能有很大差异。
