Human pitch perception is reflected in the timing of stimulus-related cortical activity

'Pitch' refers to a sound's subjective highness or lowness, as distinct fro m 'frequency,' which refers to a sound's physical structure. In speech, mus ic and other natural contexts, complex tones are often perceived with a sin gle pitch. Using whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG) and stimuli that d issociate pitch from frequency, we studied cortical dynamics in normal indi viduals who extracted different pitches from the same tone complexes. Where as all subjects showed similar spatial distributions in the magnitude of th eir brain responses to the stimuli, subjects who heard different pitches ex hibited contrasting temporal patterns of brain activity in their right but not their left hemispheres. These data demonstrate a specific relationship between pitch perception and the timing (phase) of dynamic patterns of cort ical activity.