Missing Fundamental

RingerBell

Member
Author
Benefactor
May 18, 2018
134
Tinnitus Since
2008
Cause of Tinnitus
Noise
It's quite interesting how brains can in some cases process the input from our ears. In some cases brains can detect, that based on the frequencies that ear hears, a (harmonic*) sound is missing it's fundamental frequency. And the brains compensate and fill in the missing fundamental frequency when it comes to ones perception. Even if the sound doesn't exist in the physical sense, it is somewhat created by brains and then heard.

It's quite interesting how can brains detect that a set of frequencies doesn't make sense without having a certain frequency as fundamental frequency.

Just in theory, but could this mechanism, and the constant tones in our head create something strange. Most people would probably wan't our brains to do the opposite: lose the perception of the tinnitus frequency. But I guess that's something that habituation, loosely speaking, is.

*For non-musicans and those who haven't heard of harmonics: For example, when a note is being played on a string instrument, it's made out of multiple frequencies, which are usually integer multiples of the fundamental frequency.
 
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