Processing of acoustic temporal patterns in barn owls and echolocating bats: similar mechanisms for the generation of neural place representations of auditory space.

Evidence for 'coincidence detection' or temporal summation mechanisms of temporal-pattern processing is presented for interaural-phase comparison in the barn owl's brainstem and echo delay sensitivity in the auditory cortex of the echolocating bat Myotis lucifugus. In each system, temporal tuning is correlated with the synchronous arrival of excitatory inputs from different acoustic events. Input coincidence is achieved by differences in neural transmission delay that counterbalance acoustic time disparities. Neural transmission delays are spatially organized, thus producing a topographic representation of acoustic time disparity.