Analysis of cerebral blood flow during sound source direction recognition in virtual 3D sound technology

Abstract

Recently, the use of VR contents is widely spread in various fields, such as not only entertainment but also education, training systems and housing design. In the field of VR research, there are many studies focusing on the five human senses for the purpose of improving the sense of reality. Most of them are related to vision which includes techniques for making adjustments that take into account different factors for each user, such as adjusting the interpupillary distance and adjusting the viewing angle. On the other hand, some of them focuses on sound such as virtual surround system. In virtual surround technology, it is possible to create a highly realistic sound in which the sound can be felt from all directions. However, since there are individual differences in sound changes according to the shape of the head and auricle, sound recognition depends on the characteristics of the users. In order to improve the 3D surround performance, it is necessary to adjust the location of the virtual sound source according to the individual differences. Therefore, in this paper, we focus on virtual surround technology and analyze the state of brain activity during sound direction recognition in the prefrontal cortex.