Re: maximal hearable speed of pulses

[Gerry Stefanatos <Gstefana@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Len:

Normal hearing individuals can discriminate one from two clicks with as
little as 1 to 3 ms of silence separating them (Miller & Taylor, 1948;
Patterson & Green, 1970; Hirsh, 1975). Interestingly, some patients with
temporal lobe lesions can demonstrate problems with temporal resolution 
reflected in click fusion thresholds in the order of a couple of hundred
ms (see Stefanatos, Gershkoff and Madigan (2005) for a recent review.)
Tones require a longer ISI, in the order of 20-50 ms, as you noted. 
While this tells us something about the minimal time between auditory
events that can be resolved by the human ear or brain,  I am not sure
that this tells us much about resolution of a continuous train of pulses
or when fast tapping on a snaredrum become a drumroll. But I hope it's
helpful information.


 Gerry

Gerry A. Stefanatos, D. Phil.
Director, Cognitive Neurophysiology Laboratory
Moss Rehab Research Institute
Albert Einstein Medical Center
1200 W. Tabor Rd.
Philadelphia, PA 19141
Tel: (215) 456-5962
Fax: (215) 456-5926

>>> Len Vrijders <len.vrijders@xxxxxxxx> 05/17/06 8:05 AM >>>
Hello everyone,


I am looking for any results on experiments that give a minimal time
between events so that the human ear can still hear two sperate 
events.
At an interval of 50ms, people hear a tone instead of sperate beats,
maybe that is common knowledge but I would like to read a bit 
more on the subject.

People seem to be very interested in investigating the frequencies we
can hear, and I can find many articles dealing with this 
subject, but I would like to know more about the hearable speed of
pulses, e.g. when does fast tapping on a snaredrum become a 
drumroll...

Does anyone know any articles on this matter or is maybe currently
involved in any research around the subject?


Thanks in advance,
-Len