Center for Neuroscience, UC Davis, 1544 Newton Ct. Davis, CA 95616, USA.
Hear Res. 2011 Jul;277(1-2):37-43. doi: 10.1016/j.heares.2011.03.014. Epub 2011 Mar 30.
Previous observations show that humans outperform non-human primates on some temporally-based auditory discrimination tasks, suggesting there are species differences in the proficiency of auditory temporal processing among primates. To further resolve these differences we compared the abilities of rhesus macaques and humans to detect sine-amplitude modulation (AM) of a broad-band noise carrier as a function of both AM frequency (2.5 Hz-2 kHz) and signal duration (50-800 ms), under similar testing conditions. Using a go/no-go AM detection task, we found that macaques were less sensitive than humans at the lower frequencies and shorter durations tested but were as, or slightly more, sensitive at higher frequencies and longer durations. Humans had broader AM tuning functions, with lower frequency regions of peak sensitivity (10-60 Hz) than macaques (30-120 Hz). These results support the notion that there are species differences in temporal processing among primates, and underscore the importance of stimulus duration when making cross-species comparisons for temporally-based tasks.
先前的观察表明，人类在某些基于时间的听觉辨别任务上优于非人类灵长类动物，这表明在灵长类动物中，听觉时间处理的熟练程度存在物种差异。为了进一步解决这些差异，我们比较了恒河猴和人类在检测宽带噪声载波的正弦幅度调制（AM）方面的能力，这是一个函数，包括 AM 频率（2.5 Hz-2 kHz）和信号持续时间（50-800 ms），在类似的测试条件下。使用“是/否”AM 检测任务，我们发现，与人类相比，猕猴在较低频率和较短持续时间的测试中灵敏度较低，但在较高频率和较长持续时间的测试中灵敏度相同或略高。人类的 AM 调谐函数较宽，其敏感峰值的低频区域（10-60 Hz）低于猕猴（30-120 Hz）。这些结果支持了这样一种观点，即在灵长类动物中，时间处理存在物种差异，并强调了在基于时间的任务进行跨物种比较时，刺激持续时间的重要性。
