Neural Representation of Source Direction in Reverberant Space

Head-related impulse responses measured in a classroom are used to generate realistic “reverberant” inputs to a physiologically-based model of binaural processing in the brainstem. Results show that instantaneous information provides relatively poor source direction information, even though human perception is only slightly affected by reverberation. However, analyses of the distortion of spatial cues caused by real room reverberation demonstrate that appropriate combination of noisy cues over time can increase the reliability of source direction estimates.