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Message: <blockquote data-quote="El Mahdi" data-source="post: 5611154" data-attributes="member: 59506">That's not entirely accurate. For most sighted people this is true, but for those with highly developed auditory processing it isn't. "Hearing" is done by the brain and not the ears, just as your eyes aren't actually doing the seeing. It's the processing that does the hearing and seeing. The brain determines position of sounds in a number of ways, the two most common being the difference in time between when a sound is heard in one ear before the other, and the difference in volume of a sound from one ear to the other - which is mostly how we determine a sound is coming from the right or the left. But the human brain can also determine pretty small phase differences in sounds (which is actually just timing also). And those phase differences can happen within the signal from one ear, rather than just the signal between ears - which is how we locate the position of a sound from front to back. The outer ear acts as both a filter and an accoustic channel, with the shape of the ear helping to create harmonics and phase differences, just like an object creating eddy currents in water. The brain also uses this to determine localization of sound. The more developed this processing is in the brain, the better the persons 3D picture of the environment. That phase difference is also how sound can be manipulated to provide depth and position (front to back) even from only two speakers. The Bose Wave system and SRS processing exploits this very thing. This processing is usually not as developed in sighted people as opposed to those who are blind - but even sighted people can develop it with practice. It's just a matter of depriving yourself of sight so that the brain is forced to adapt (however this does take significant time and effort - and No, I have not done this). In those deprived of sight, the part of the brain used for visual processing oft times ends up being subsumed for auditory processing - and it's very much 3D. But just like with sighted people, some blind people have really good spatial processing and others don't. Spatial sensing from hearing may not ever be as exact as visual location - but it can be quite good in those who have developed it, and it's definitely 3D. The shape of each persons ear is unique to them, and the processing inside their brain is just as unique. A sighted person whose dominant spatial processing is also visual (as most are), probably wouldn't be noticably affected by the loss of their external ear (except for cosmetics), as long as the internal structures weren't damaged. But a person with a higly developed auditory component to their spatial processing would need some time to compensate. Likewise recieving a prosthetic or transplanted ear would also change the way sound enters the ear, and the brain would need time to compensate - to relearn what the phase differences mean. This is also the reason that surround sound, SRS, Bose Wave, etc., don't work the same or as effectively for every person. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/glasses.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt="B-)" title="Glasses    B-)" data-shortname="B-)" /></blockquote>

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