Accurate detection of interaural time differences by a population of slowly integrating neurons.

For localization of a sound source, animals and humans process the microsecond interaural time differences of arriving sound waves. How nervous systems, consisting of elements with time constants of about and more than 1 ms, can reach such high precision is still an open question. In this Letter we present a hypothesis and show theoretical and computational evidence that a rather large population of slowly integrating neurons with inhibitory and excitatory inputs (EI neurons) can detect minute temporal disparities in input signals which are significantly less than any time constant in the system.