Behavioral and Brain Sciences



Open Peer Commentary
Sussman et al.: Linear correlates in the speech signal

Linearity or separability?


Bärbel Herrnberger a1 and Günter Ehret a1
a1 Department of Comparative Neurobiology, University of Ulm, 89069 Ulm, Germany baerbel.herrnberger@biologie.uni-ulm.de guenter.ehret@biologie.uni-ulm.de http://cat.biologie.uni-ulm.de/

Abstract

Sussman et al. state that auditory systems exploit linear correlations in the sound signal in order to identify perceptual categories. Can the auditory system recognize linearity? In bats and owls, separability of emergent features is an additional constraint that goes beyond linearity and for which linearity is not a necessary prerequisite.