Summary
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1.
Binaurally time-shifted and intensityunbalanced noise, delivered through earphones, induced owls to respond with a head-orienting behavior similar to that which occurs to free field auditory stimuli.
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2.
Owls derived the azimuthal and elevational coordinates of a sound from a combination of interaural time difference (ITD) and interaural intensity difference (IID).
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3.
IID and ITD each contained information about the azimuth and elevation of the signal. Thus, IID and ITD formed a coordinate system in which the axes were non-orthogonal.
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4.
ITD was a strong determinant of azimuth, and IID was a strong determinant of elevation, of elicited head turn.
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Abbreviations
- IID :
-
Interaural intensity difference
- ITD :
-
Interaural time difference
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Moiseff, A. Bi-coordinate sound localization by the barn owl. J. Comp. Physiol. 164, 637–644 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00614506
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00614506