Facilitation of seeing by hearing: Binaural summation

Supplemental Information Directional Hearing by Linear Summation of Binaural Inputs at the Medial Superior Olive

Directional Hearing by Linear Summation of Binaural Inputs at the Medial Superior Olive

Neurons in the medial superior olive (MSO) enable sound localization by their remarkable sensitivity to submillisecond interaural time differences (ITDs). Each MSO neuron has its own "best ITD" to which it responds optimally. A difference in physical path length of the excitatory inputs from both ears cannot fully account for the ITD tuning of MSO neurons. As a result, it is still debated how t...

Quantification of binaural loudness summation by measuring simple reaction time

When listening to sounds in a natural environment, different sound pressure levels reach the two ears. They are nevertheless combined to result in a single ’binaural’ loudness. This phenomenon is called binaural loudness summation. In the laboratory it can be carried to an extreme by stimulating one ear only (monaural presentation) or both ears (binaural or diotic presentation) using headphones...

Importance of binaural hearing.

An essential task for the central auditory pathways is to parse the auditory messages sent by the two cochleae into auditory objects, the segregation and localisation of which constitute an important means of separating target signals from noise and competing sources. When hearing losses are too asymmetric, the patients face a situation in which the monaural exploitation of sound messages signi...

Binaural hearing and future hearing-aids technology

Normal-hearing persons can make use of two ears in daily listening, and this binaural hearing offers a lot of advantages compared to monaural hearing. The mechanisms of binaural hearing are based on an analysis of interaural differences and monaural cues that are due to directional dependent filtering of the outer ears as described by HeadTransfer Functions. In order to support the binaural abi...