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Updated: Jul 9, 2026

An Automated System for Sound Localization Testing in Hearing-Impaired Listeners
Published on: March 13, 2026
A sensorimotor approach to sound localization
Murat Aytekin1, Cynthia F Moss, Jonathan Z Simon
1Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, U.S.A. aytekin@umd.edu
Abstract:
Sound localization is known to be a complex phenomenon, combining multisensory information processing, experience-dependent plasticity, and movement. Here we present a sensorimotor model that addresses the question of how an organism could learn to localize sound sources without any a priori neural representation of its head-related transfer function or prior experience with auditory spatial information. We demonstrate quantitatively that the experience of the sensory consequences of its voluntary motor actions allows an organism to learn the spatial location of any sound source. Using examples from humans and echolocating bats, our model shows that a naive organism can learn the auditory space based solely on acoustic inputs and their relation to motor states.
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