Nonlinear Dynamical Approach to Pitch Perception and Harmony

For perception, the brain handles and reacts to an enormous amount of information from the senses in real time. The question of how all this information is represented and processed within the nervous system is addressed by the nonlinear and complex system researches through the proposal that dynamical attractors may form the basis of neural information processing. Sometimes, this rather qualitative approach to modeling provides very accurate quantitative predictions. Here we show an example where this idea can be successfully applied in the human auditory system to describe and, perhaps, explain the nature of some phenomena in the perception of pitch. We will also discuss possible implications of this approach to the theory of harmony.