Who, What, Where? Recognition and Localization of Acoustic Signals by Insects

Insects, like all hearing animals, must analyze acoustic signals to determine both their content and their location. Neurophysiological experiments, together with behavioral tests, are beginning to reveal the mechanisms underlying these signal-analysis tasks. Work summarized here focusses on two issues: first, how insects analyze the temporal structure of a single signal in the presence of other competing signals; and second, how the signal's location is represented by the binaural difference in neural activity.