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Internally Coupled Ears (ICE): Biophysical Consequences and Underlying Mechanisms

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Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience

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Synonyms

Internally coupled ears; Pressure-difference receiver; Pressure-gradient receiver

Though the notions of pressure-gradient receiver and pressure-difference receiver have been used widely (van Hemmen et al. 2016, Sect. 2), they are not really synonymous with the “internally coupled ears” or for short ICE that we analyze here because, in contrast to ICE, both are ill-defined or even wrong. The pressure difference between the two eardrums never gives rise to a gradient since, for the terrestrial vertebrates under consideration, the interaural distance L is of the order of cm. A gradient means taking a derivative and, hence, a limit L → 0 whereas in reality L is fixed and bound to remain finite >0. Even though L is of the order of a few, usually <2, cm and hence ≪ λ, with λ as a wavelength relevant to sound localization, a finite Lis essential to giving a finite time delay for all nonzero directions. The time delay between left and right eardrums is a cue, though not the only...

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Acknowledgments

In the context of ICE, the author is greatly indebted to several friends and colleagues for their collaboration, criticism, and support. He particularly thanks Catherine Carr, Jakob Christensen-Dalsgaard, David Heider, Peter Narins, Anupam Vedurmudi, Christine Vossen, and Bruce Young.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physik Department and Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience–Munich, Technical University of Munich, Garching bei München, Germany

    J. Leo van Hemmen

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  1. J. Leo van Hemmen
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Correspondence to J. Leo van Hemmen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Dieter Jaeger

  2. University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA

    Ranu Jung

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Mathematics, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

    Rodica Curtu

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van Hemmen, J.L. (2022). Internally Coupled Ears (ICE): Biophysical Consequences and Underlying Mechanisms. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1006-0_100686

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