TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2014//
TI  - Natural auditory scene statistics shapes human spatial hearing
JO  - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
A1  - Parise, Cesare V.
A1  - Knorre, Katharina
A1  - Ernst, Marc O.
SP  - 6104
EP  - 6108
VL  - 111
IS  - 16
N2  - Human perception, cognition, and action are laced with seemingly arbitrary mappings. In particular, sound has a strong spatial connotation: Sounds are high and low, melodies rise and fall, and pitch systematically biases perceived sound elevation. The origins of such mappings are unknown. Are they the result of physiological constraints, do they reflect natural environmental statistics, or are they truly arbitrary? We recorded natural sounds from the environment, analyzed the elevation-dependent filtering of the outer ear, and measured frequency-dependent biases in human sound localization. We find that auditory scene statistics reveals a clear mapping between frequency and elevation. Perhaps more interestingly, this natural statistical mapping is tightly mirrored in both ear-filtering properties and in perceived sound location. This suggests that both sound localization behavior and ear anatomy are fine-tuned to the statistics of natural auditory scenes, likely providing the basis for the spatial connotation of human hearing.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0027-8424
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1322705111
ID  - ref1
ER  -