Auditory motion perception is not computed from endpoint comparisons

Evidence

Furthermore, the large difference between the localization accuracy and the minimum angular range needed for motion direction discrimination renders it unlikely that the owls solve the motion direction discrimination task by a “snapshot” mechanism. The snapshot hypothesis suggests that the processing of motion simply relies on comparing starting and endpoint of the moving stimulus (e.g., Perrot and Marlborough 1989 ). The snapshot hypothesis was also dismissed in human psychophysical studies determining the minimum audible movement angle (reviewed by Middlebrooks and Green 1991 ). The difference between the barn owl’s sensitivity for comparing angular locations of static sounds (Bala et al. 2007 ) and the large angular range needed for direction discrimination (present study) suggests that the snapshot hypothesis does not apply to barn owls. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 3181

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: Parallels human psychophysical findings on minimum audible movement angle that also reject the snapshot model — cross-species convergence.

Related

• Barn owls do not decode sound motion by comparing start and end points (similarity 0.93)
• Motion direction perception requires a much larger angular sweep than static localization (similarity 0.91)
• Auditory motion direction detection requires much larger angular sweeps than static sound localization does. (similarity 0.89)
• Barn owls distinguish sound motion only across spans far exceeding their static localization acuity (similarity 0.89)
• Barn owls can be trained to report acoustic motion direction changes (similarity 0.88)
• Inhibition and adaptation, not velocity matching, drive motion direction selectivity (similarity 0.87)
• Angular range dominates hearing-driven motion detection over speed and duration. (similarity 0.86)
• Owls require 24° of motion but only 3° for static localization (similarity 0.86)
• Motion perception improves with larger sweep angles more than with faster sweeps (similarity 0.85)
• Angular range, not velocity, dominates barn owl auditory motion discrimination sensitivity (similarity 0.85)
• Frontal space yields better auditory motion discrimination than lateral space (similarity 0.83)
• Stimulus velocity badly predicts owl motion discrimination because duration and range co-determine it (similarity 0.83)
• Owls detect direction changes more readily in frontal than lateral space. (similarity 0.81)
• Barn owl auditory motion studies use simulated sound sweeps across speaker arrays (similarity 0.80)
• Auditory motion-direction neurons in barn owls tolerate very broad velocity ranges (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Motion direction perception requires a much larger angular sweep than static localization #complicates (0.82) — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 3216