Improvement of Hearing Ability by Directional Information

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Abstract
An investigation is undertaken of the ability to hear a signal sound in the presence of noise, when the signal and the interfering sound each have a directional characteristic and are separated from each other more than a certain degree, compared with the case when both are not separated. We attempt to determine through what process in our auditory system such a phenomenon occurs. We think that, when there are many sounds coming from many directions, directional information is extracted from the neural signals from both ears in our auditory system, each sound is localized in each place or direction, and a certain particular sound is selected and listened to. There is considerable difference, in the subject's ability to hear the sound, between the case in which a subject concentrates his attention on it, and the case in which he does not. For this interpretation, “attention” is introduced. It is clarified that the function that maintains the attention leads to the selective hearing of a signal relative to its direction and timbre.

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