An autocorrelation model of bat sonar.
Their sonar system allows echolocating bats to navigate with high skill through a complex, three- dimensional environment at high speed and low light. The auditory analysis of the echoes of their ultrasonic sounds requires a detailed comparison of the emission and echoes. Here an auditory model of bat sonar is introduced and evaluated against a set of psychophysical phantom-target, echo-acoustic experiments. The model consists of a relatively detailed simulation of auditory peripheral processing in the bat, Phyllostomus discolor, followed by a functional module consisting of a strobed, normalised, autocorrelation in each frequency channel. The model output is accumulated in a sonar image buffer. The model evaluation is based on the comparison of the image-buffer contents generated in individually simulated psychophysical trials. The model provides reasonably good predictions for both temporal and spectral behavioural sonar processing in terms of sonar delay-, roughness, and phase sensitivity and in terms of sensitivity to the temporal separations in two-front targets and the classification of spectrally divergent phantom targets.
Wiegrebe
Lutz
L
Biozentrum, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, München, Germany. lutzw@lmu.de
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000818:Animals; D001306:Auditory Pathways / Q000502:physiology; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology; D002685:Chiroptera / Q000502:physiology*; D004455:Echolocation / Q000502:physiology*; D008954:Models, Biological; D013016:Sound; D013057:Spectrum Analysis