We study experimentally the phenomenon of ghost stochastic resonance in pulse-coupled excitable systems, for input signals distributed among different elements. Specifically, two excitable electronic circuits are driven by different sinusoidal signals that produce periodic spikes at distinct frequencies. Their outputs are sent to a third circuit that processes these spiking signals and is additionally perturbed by noise. When the input signals are harmonics of a certain fundamental (that is not present in the inputs) the processing circuit exhibits, for an optimal amount of noise, a resonant response at the frequency of the missing fundamental (ghost frequency). In contrast with the standard case in which the signals being directly integrated are sinusoidal, this behavior relies here on a coincidence-detection mechanism. When the input signals are homogeneously shifted in frequency, the processing circuit responds with pulse packages composed of spikes at a frequency that depends linearly on the frequency shift. Expressions for the dependence of the package period and duration on the frequency shift and spike width, respectively, are obtained. These results provide an experimental verification of a recently proposed mechanism of binaural pitch perception.

• Received 29 September 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.73.021101