[samatman]

The accurate way of saying this is that the cochlear does Fourier analysis.

Folks around here don't handle ambiguity well, and are treating your comment like it's wrong, rather than basically correct except for a harmless conflation of an algorithm for something with the thing itself.

Ah well.

[TaupeRanger]

No, that's also not accurate. Words mean things. We know that parts of the cochlea respond to different frequencies, but that does remotely imply that the auditory system is doing Fourier analysis, which is a high level mathematical transform with a specific set of formulations. "Fourier Analysis" does not describe every possible method of extracting frequency content from a signal.

[samatman]

> Fourier analysis of discharge patterns in response to sinusoidal acoustic stimulation provides a consistent and repeatable measure of response phase and amplitude. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 58, 867 (1975); https://doi.org/10.1121/1.380735

> sinusoidal frequency domain decomposition of sound waves is a key mechanical phenomenon exploited by our hearing system, leading to in effect a frequency domain transformation of the temporal pattern of compressions and rarefactions that we term sound. https://uncommondescent.com/video/hearing-the-cochlea-the-fr...

That one has a video.

Your case is roughly as incoherent as one which claims that a thrown ball does not perform Newtonian physics. It doesn't have to.

Now that we've disposed of the nonsense that cochlear response is not meaningfully modeled with Fourier analysis, interested parties might have fun with research into all the ways this model is not perfect. I've got a paper loaded in my reader claiming it's actually wavelet analysis, for when I have time and inclination to read it.

[accountofme]

thanks for your reply :)

You are right. My apologies for the conflation.