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Updated: Aug 4, 2025

A Method for Tracking the Time Evolution of Steady-State Evoked Potentials
Published on: May 25, 2019
Wave interference at the contralateral ear helps explain non-monotonic envelope interaural time differences as a
Paul G Mayo1, Andrew D Brown2, Matthew J Goupell1
1Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA.
Abstract:
Interaural time differences (ITDs), an important acoustic cue for perceptual sound-source localization, are conventionally modeled as monotonic functions of azimuth. However, recent literature and publicly available databases from binaural manikins demonstrated ITDs conveyed by the envelopes (ENV-ITDs) of high-frequency (≥2 kHz) signals that were non-monotonic functions of azimuth. This study demonstrates using a simple, time-dependent geometric model of an elliptic head that the back-traveling (longer) sound path around the head, delayed and added to the conventionally treated front-traveling path, can account for non-monotonic ENV-ITDs. These findings have implications for spatial-hearing models in acoustic and electric (cochlear-implant) hearing.
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