The Apple and the Ear, Grasping Sounds in Space—A Theory of Sound Localization

Abstract

Sensing the direction of origin of a sound in space has long been attributed to the delay between arrival times between the two ears. This, now discredited two dimensional theory, was put to rest by the observation that a person deaf in one ear can locate sounds in three dimensional space. We present here a new theory of sound localization that has the re-quired three dimensional measurement. It is a theory that interprets the well researched biological structure of the mammalian cochlea in a new and logical way, which leads to a deeper understanding of how sound localization functions.