Macrocircuits for Sound Localization Use Leaky Coincidence Detectors and Specialized Synapses

The auditory system computes sound location by detecting submillisecond time differences in the arrival of sound at the two ears. Studies by van der Heijden et al. (2013) and Roberts et al. (2013) in this issue of Neuron shed light on how this is accomplished by the interaction of excitatory and inhibitory synapses.