An upper bound on the temporal resolution of human hearing

This work obtained an upperbound of about 5 ms for the temporal resolution of hearing by studying human discriminability for bandwidth restriction by low-pass filtering. While low-pass filtering affects both the spectrum and temporal definition of the signal, the spectral changes in this experiment fall below the known just noticeable differences, so that the threshold seems to reflect the neural temporal-discrimination of the auditory system, rather than its ability to distinguish spectral cues based on tonotopic excitation patterns. The present result shows that human temporal resolution extends down to time scales much shorter than found in the past. Rough estimates of the expected resolution, based on convergencies in the cochlear nucleus and subsequent stages, yields values in a range that is consistent with the present experimental result.