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The Listening Room of the Parmly Hearing Institute which is a
sound-deadened room with eight loudspeakers arranged in a semicircle in front of a
listener. KEMAR (Knowles Electronic Manikin for Acoustic Research) is shown. KEMAR is used
to make sound measurements that simulated those that would exist at the eardrums of a
normal male listener. |
The major objective of behavioral and psychophysical research is to characterize the ability of various sensory systems to perform complex signal analysis in order for animals to determine stimulus sources in their environment. In this research approach, behaviors, ranging from conditioned or naturally-occurring behaviors of animals to verbal or computer-keyed responses from humans, are measured in response to various stimuli. Essentially, these behavioral responses can be regarded as the motor output of the entire nervous system to stimulus sources in the animal's surroundings. This "end product" of sensory processing can then be compared to physiological measures of processing at different levels of the nervous system (see Physiological and Anatomical Research) or to models of sensory function (see Modeling in Research and Education) to determine how sensory information is encoded and processed by the brain. Without this information, animals cannot determine the identity and location of important sources, for example predators, prey and mates, and thus their ability to survive is severely impaired. Behavioral research at Parmly has the following major components: