Discussion

Abstract

I would like to make a couple of comments. First of all, I think, we have here a nice example of how physiology can helo. I think that the “echolocating” device like the one Dr. Heyes presented, the sonic aid, was inspired from physiology which is not ours but that of the bat. The bat has a beautiful system that works along those lines; it sends out ultrasounds and it takes in the signals, and has special sensory centers to process them. Some of the problems arise from trying to apply that kind of processing to our auditory channel which is made in a different way. The seond comment I want to make is that here we are talking about mobility rather than object recognition. This an important distinction, I think, space localization of an object and object recognition. The auditory system may be not the most suited to provide spatial localization. At the level of the receptor, at the cochlea, all explicit information on spatial localization is lost. We have in our auditory system—further in the brain—special centers to recreate that information, but this is achieved only partially, and it is achieved by comparing the signals from the two ears. So, we will always need the two ears—I think you made some comments on the “binaurality”.