Acoustic pursuit of invisible moving targets by cats

Head movements evoked by an invisible acoustic target were used as a metric to analyze localization of moving sources of sound in naive cat's. The target was presented in the lateral sound field and moved along an are at constant angular speeds. Head-movement trajectories were characterized by a large-magnitude orienting component that undershot the target, and a tracking component elicited by the target during acoustic pursuit. The tracking component was characterized by a succession of stepwise head movements that maintained a relatively close alignment of the median plane of the head with the moving acoustic target. (C) 1999 Acoustical Society of America. [S0001-4966(99)03205-1].