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Differential Adaptation in Azimuth and Elevation to Acute Monaural Spatial Hearing after Training with Visual
Bahram Zonooz1, A John Van Opstal2
1Donders Centre for Neuroscience, Department of Biophysics, Radboud University, Nijmegen 6525 AJ, The Netherlands.
Eneuro
|October 12, 2019
Summary
Listeners can rapidly adapt their sound localization skills when one ear is blocked by adjusting how they weigh different auditory cues. This adaptation improves horizontal sound localization but may impair vertical localization.
Area of Science:
- Auditory Neuroscience
- Psychoacoustics
- Human Perception
Background:
- Horizontal sound localization relies on binaural cues (level and time differences).
- Blocking one ear disrupts these cues, forcing reliance on monaural and spectral cues.
- Adaptive mechanisms for acute monauralization remain unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate listeners' ability to adapt sound localization percepts with acute monauralization.
- To determine if listeners can adjust the weighting of different auditory cues (level, spectral, binaural) during training.
- To assess if adaptation to monauralization transfers to untrained sound levels and locations.
Main Methods:
- Subjects trained with visual feedback using high-pass filtered sounds and acute monaural occlusion.
- Investigated adaptation to erroneous sound localization percepts.
- Tested localization performance in azimuth and elevation post-training.
Main Results:
- Acutely plugged listeners rapidly adjusted cue weighting (level, spectral, binaural) to improve azimuth localization.
- Adaptation generalized to untrained sound levels and locations.
- Cue re-weighting resulted in poorer elevation localization, consistent with training stimuli.
Conclusions:
- The human auditory system demonstrates rapid adaptive cue re-weighting in response to acute monauralization.
- This adaptation prioritizes performance in the trained dimension (azimuth) even at the cost of accuracy in others (elevation).
- The auditory system dynamically adjusts cue contributions to meet environmental demands.
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