Visualization of functional count-comparison-based binaural auditory model output

Abstract

The count-comparison principle in binaural auditory modeling is based on the assumption that there are nuclei in the mammalian auditory pathway that encode the directional cues in the rate of the output. When this principle is applied, the outputs of the modeled nuclei do not directly result in a topographically organized map of the auditory space that could be monitored as such. Therefore, this article presents a method for visualizing the information from the outputs as well as the nucleus models. The functionality of the auditory model presented here is tested in various binaural listening scenarios, including localization tasks and the discrimination of a target in the presence of distracting sound as well as sound scenarios consisting of multiple simultaneous sound sources. The performance of the model is illustrated with binaural activity maps. The activations seen in the maps are compared to human performance in similar scenarios, and it is shown that the performance of the model is in accordance with the psychoacoustical data.