Natural auditory scene statistics shapes human spatial hearing.
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.
Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics and Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
Cesare V
CV
Parise
Katharina
K
Knorre
Marc O
MO
Ernst
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006309:Hearing / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
Bayesian modeling; cross-modal correspondence; frequency–elevation mapping; head-related transfer function