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A comment on The blind man who taught himself to see. Parent comment

Re:The blind man who taught himself to see by Florin_Andrei on Thursday March 03, 2011 @11:13AM (#2284548)
Yes and no.

There's something funny going on with front-back perception. Normally it shouldn't be doable, but the external part of the ear is like a direction-dependent frequency filter. When the brain hears a familiar sound, but the spectrum is skewed just like this, it goes "aha, this comes from the front side". If the spectrum is skewed the other way, it goes "this comes from behind".

It's not 100% reliable, but it works some times.

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Re:The blind man who taught himself to see by nevinera on Thursday March 03, 2011 @11:30AM (#2284620)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_localization

There's a lot more to it than that, and it's not just something that occasionally works. The outer-ear notch filtering is also used in vertical localization.

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Re:The blind man who taught himself to see by sethg on Thursday March 03, 2011 @11:20AM (#2284576)
Also: people who depend on behind-the-ear hearing aids do not get the benefit of these echoes, which means that, for example, it’s harder for them to distinguish the voice of someone talking to them from background noise or from echoes off the walls.
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