RESTARTing the stabilized auditory image: How transient sampling of binaural information supports the emergence of stable auditory scenes

Abstract

The perception of a spatial auditory scene involves the extraction and integration of multiple dynamic and unreliable sensory features (“cues”). Variation in each cue reflects the competing effects of multiple features of the auditory scene—e.g., relevant and irrelevant sound sources. Understanding which cue changes belong together—and to which objects—represents a fundamental challenge to the neural mechanisms of auditory scene perception. RESTART theory suggests a solution: transient, envelope-triggered sampling creates a temporally sparse representation of spatial features. Sparsity minimizes overlap between auditory objects and reduces ambiguity in the face of environmental distortions such as noise and reverberation. Envelope-triggered (“strobed”) sampling stabilizes the auditory image by emphasizing the most reliable cues. Here, we review the key evidence supporting RESTART theory, its neurocomputational mechanisms, and prior efforts to model them. [Work supported by US NIH R01-DC016643.]