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Updated: Nov 29, 2025

Morphological and Functional Evaluation of Ribbon Synapses at Specific Frequency Regions of the Mouse Cochlea
Published on: May 10, 2019
Special acoustical role of pinna simplifying spatial target localization by the brown long-eared bat Plecotus auritus
Xin Ma1,2, Sen Zhang1, Zheng Dong1
1School of Information Science and Engineering, Shandong University, Qingdao, Shandong 266237, China.
Abstract:
Echolocating bats locate a target by sonar. The performance of this system is related to the shape of the binaural conformation in bats. From numerical predictions, it was found that in a central frequency band, the orientation of a strong sidelobe is shifted nearly linearly in the vertical direction. Inspired by this, the authors built an accurate wide-scope elevation estimation system by constructing a pair of erect artificial pinnae and realized simultaneous elevation and azimuth estimation by constructing a pair of orthogonal pinnae. By demonstrating the simplicity of spatial target echolocation, the authors showed that only two independent single-output neural networks were needed for either elevation or azimuth estimation. This method could be applied to imitate any other mammal species with similar pinna directivity patterns to facilitate and improve an artificial echolocation system.
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