Interaural time and level differences contribute differently to source segregation and spatial selection

Interaural time and level differences are crucial in sound localization, yet their contributions to sound source segregation and spatial selection remain underspecified. Here, participants completed a spatial auditory selective attention task while we measured hemodynamic activity in the prefrontal cortex and superior temporal gyrus using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Participants listened to a target sound stream and a simultaneous spatially separated speech stream or white noise masker. Sound streams were spatialized with either 50 μs interaural time differences (ITDs), 500 μs ITDs, naturally occurring interaural level differences (ILDs) from a non-individualized head-related transfer function (HRTF), or broadband 10 dB ILDs. Behavioral results revealed a stronger effect of spatial cues when the masker was speech. Error patterns differed in the two difficult conditions, small ITDs and natural ILDs: Small ITDs produced lower hit rates, while naturally occurring ILDs produced higher false alarm rates. Small ITDs led to greater activity in prefrontal cortex and activity in superior temporal gyrus that was lateralized, greater in the hemisphere contralateral to attentional focus, consistent with previous reports. These results suggest that natural ILDs alone support source segregation even if they are insufficient to cause large shifts in perceived lateralization, explaining high false alarm rates (confusions between target and distractor words). In contrast, small ITDs alone may be insufficient to segregate competing sources, leading to low hit and false alarm rates. Together, these results reveal differences in how ITDs and ILDs contribute to auditory scene analysis and spatial attention.