Role of the dog's auditory cortex in discrimination of sound signals simulating sound source movement.

The ability of seven dogs to discriminate signal simulating sound source movement was studied using the avoidance technique. It was found that dogs can differentiate moving and stationary sound sources, and also discern the direction of the sound source movement. In addition, this study has defined the limits of the conditions under which sound source movement perception occurs. In each dog, unilateral ablation of the auditory cortex was followed by a localization deficit on the side contralateral to the ablation. Bilateral cortical lesions led to complete absence of the ability to discriminate source movement, simulated by changing stimulus interaural time differences. However, the dogs' ability to discriminate the movement after unilateral ablation by detecting interaural intensity differences was preserved, although their discriminative ability was lower than that of intact dogs.