Psychophysical tuning curves for the goldfish

• Published in: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America Vol. 61; no. S1; p. S87
• Main Authors: Fay, Richard R., Orawski, Arthur T., Ahroon, William A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01-06-1977
• ISSN: 0001-4966; 1520-8524
• DOI: 10.1121/1.2015947

Psychophysical tuning curves were obtained for the goldfish using a classically conditioned respiratory method. Pure tones and 40-Hz-wide noise bands were used as signals, and pure tones were used as maskers. In general, tuning curves are “V”-shaped with Q10 values increasing from about 1 to 9 as signal frequency is increased from 100 to 1000 Hz. However, tuning curves obtained for signal frequencies of 300 Hz or above showed pronounced secondary peaks occurring several hundred Hz above and below the signal frequency. Neurophysiological tuning curves for goldfish saccular neurons [R. R. Fay, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 60, S80(A) (1976)] show considerably less tuning with Q10's not exceeding about 1.5. This suggests that some additional filtering is occurring in the goldfish auditory system which is based on principles other than those thought to operate in mammalian systems. We suggest that the envelopes of the multipeaked psychophysical curves reflect a tuning mechanism peripheral to the impulse generating processes of auditory neurons, while the peaks themselves are a result of a central neural tuning mechanism. [Work supported by a grant from the NSF to R. Fay.]