How the cochlea computes (2024)

Man, I've been spreading disinformation for years.

the closest i have been, was acoustic phase discrimination by owls.

there appears to be no software for this, its all hardware, the signal format flips as it travels through the anatomy.

This is one of those pedant vs cocktail chatterer distinctions. It's an interesting dive and gives a nice, triggering, headline.

But, to the vast majority who don't really know or care about the math, "Fourier Transform" is, at best, a totem for the entire concept space of "frequency domain", "spectral decomposition", etc.

They are not making fine distinctions of tradeoffs among different methods. I'm not sure I'd even call it disinformation to tell this hand-wavy story and pique someone's interest in a topic they otherwise never thought about...

This might be interesting for you - https://nakulg.com/assets/papers/owlet_mobisys2021_nakul.pdf

Owls use asymmetric skull structure which helps them in spatial perception of sound.

that was the start of it. the offset otic openings result in differential arrival times of the acoustic peaks, thus phase differential.

neurosynaptically, there is no phase, there is frequency shift corresponding to presynaptic intensity, and there is spatio-temporal integration of these signals. temporal integration is where "phase" matters

its all a mix of "digital" all or nothing "gates" and analog frequency shift propagation of the "gate" output.

its all made nebulous by the adaptive, and hysteretic nature of the elements in neural "circuitry"

also, the common ancestor of mammals and birds did not have a tympanic ear, so sound localization evolved differently in the avian vs. mammalian hearing systems. A good review is here: https://journals.physiology.org/doi/pdf/10.1152/physrev.0002.... How the brain calculates interaural time delays is actually an interesting problem as the time delays are so short, that it is less time than a neuron has to fire an action potential.