Principles of acoustic motion detection in animals and man

Motion provides one of the most important cues for survival, because it helps to break the camouflage of a predator or a prey and because it allows predictions about the future path of an object. Recent data on the processing of acoustic motion have yielded some astonishing findings, suggesting that the psychophysical, neurological and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the detection and representation of acoustic motion are quite similar to those underlying the detection and representation in other modalities, especially in vision. A further comparison of these similarities and differences with respect to the different environmental constraints posed for the different modalities may help in understanding general problems associated with motion computations.