Havard researchers have developed acoustophoretic printing, a method that uses 3D printing technology and highly localized sound waves to generate of droplets with defined sizes and a wide range of viscosities.
In favorable conditions of +10 dB SNR, Chung et al. (2008) found that directional microphones did not degrade localization performance and helped hearing impaired (HI) listeners localize sounds from the rear both in quiet and in noise.
In contrast with control animals, which rely primarily on timing and intensity differences between their two ears to localize sound sources, the juvenile-plugged ferrets developed the ability to localize sounds accurately by relying more on the unchanged spectral localization cues provided by the single normal ear.
And in this case, the person just has one ear implanted, so her ability to localize sounds is compromised.
And it also emphasizes the function of your external ear, which helps you localize sounds in space.
"We know that it is possible to localize sounds, and it is likely that the blind get better at this than sighted people".
And especially in terms of when the sound varied in elevation, they found that there were huge differences, that they couldn't localize sounds that were straight ahead versus sounds that were coming from above themselves with these distortions.
You like having pairs of those sense organs, two eyes for binocular vision, two ears to localize sounds and twinned nostrils so you can follow your nose to freshly baked bread or the nape of a lover's irresistibly immunocompatible neck?
But what was funny and what harks back to the title of the article is that when they had the volunteers go out and live their normal lives with these pinna distortions in for a few weeks, then they came back into the lab and tested them again, they found that they could now localize sounds in elevation with these new ears.
Student volunteers presented with odors to one nostril or the other could reliably discern where the odor was coming from, and functional magnetic resonance images of their brains showed that the brain is set up to pay attention to the difference between what the left and right nostrils sense, much the way it can localize sounds by contrasting input from the ears.
