Reflection on theme 2 - What I’ve learnt

I found this seminar really interesting and giving, or as one might say: fruitful. It was really fun to discuss the different theories and what theory in fact is. Before this week’s theme, my perception of theory have been what you might describe as a type IV: explanation and prediction. It’s been very rooted in my thinking that that is theory. So it was quite refreshing to learn new definitions of theory. Albeit that they might be discussed a lot whether or not they’re in fact theories, but that is not something I plan to take on in the immediate future.

What I would like to do, however, is to focus on a theory that I found quite interesting. And that theory is ”Theory of binaural sound synthesis”. I’ve come in contact with this theory before, and even worked with it to some extent, but I decided to try and find new papers and ways of applying it. One area in which you can apply it is movies: to get a feeling of actually being at the scene. Computer games could also be more immersive, but that pose another problem: it’s hard to do real-time binaural. Maybe in the future with quantum computing.

Anyhow, the most interesting paper i found was by Sonoda et al. (2001) published in the journal “Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry with Practical Neurology” (IF 4.764). In the paper, they set out to find how brain damage on either the right side or the left side of the brain affected the ability to locate the direction of sounds (the damage was caused by a stroke). To do this, they used binaural sounds that came through a headphone. The hearing was otherwise good for the test subjects, and they were in such mental condition that they fully understood everything. The sounds came from a field of 180 degrees, with the center directly in front of the test subject. The researchers found out that people with damage on the right side of the brain where more prone to errors, which “may be explained by the inattention theory of hemispatial neglect”.

It’s really fascinating that you can apply a design theory in field of audio technique in the field of medical research. That truly shows how a general theory have the possibility to do so much more than a specific and contextual one.


Reference
S Sonoda, M Mori, A Goishi. (2001) Pattern of localisation error in patients with stroke to sound processed by a binaural sound space processor