An autocorrelation model of bat sonar

Wiegrebe, Lutz (2008): An autocorrelation model of bat sonar. In: Biological Cybernetics, Vol. 98, No. 6: pp. 587-595

Abstract

Their sonar system allows echolocating bats to navigate with high skill through a complex, three- dimensional environment at high speed and low light. The auditory analysis of the echoes of their ultrasonic sounds requires a detailed comparison of the emission and echoes. Here an auditory model of bat sonar is introduced and evaluated against a set of psychophysical phantom-target, echo-acoustic experiments. The model consists of a relatively detailed simulation of auditory peripheral processing in the bat, Phyllostomus discolor, followed by a functional module consisting of a strobed, normalised, autocorrelation in each frequency channel. The model output is accumulated in a sonar image buffer. The model evaluation is based on the comparison of the image-buffer contents generated in individually simulated psychophysical trials. The model provides reasonably good predictions for both temporal and spectral behavioural sonar processing in terms of sonar delay-, roughness, and phase sensitivity and in terms of sensitivity to the temporal separations in two-front targets and the classification of spectrally divergent phantom targets.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Faculties: Biology > Department Biology II > Neurobiology
• Subjects: 500 Science > 570 Life sciences; biology
• ISSN: 0340-1200
• Language: English