Pitch selectivity in ferret auditory cortex

Our perception of pitch—the tonal quality of a sound at a fundamental frequency (F0)—is essential for musical melody, vocal communication, and attending to a voice in a crowded room. Pitch is distinct from simple frequency tuning. Although pitch perception can arise from either harmonic spectral structure or temporal regularity, it remains unclear how individual neurons represent these distinct cues. We recorded spiking activity in hundreds of ferret auditory cortical neurons while systematically varying harmonic and temporal pitch cues. A subset of neurons provided spike rate representations of F0 based on harmonic content, another subset based on temporal periodicity, and a third population exhibited invariant pitch tuning across both cue classes. These findings provide evidence of neurons in non-primates that are selectively tuned to pitch and demonstrate that the mammalian auditory cortex employs dual spectral and temporal mechanisms for extracting F0.