hearing tests - where and how?

HI guys - I am a bit mystified by your hostility to this idea - unless I read that article Al linked wrong, I thought it clearly stated that the brain activity of I think it was 6 of the 16 people registered very differently when tones above 20kHz were played. So these people obviously had some sort of perception of/reaction to it, and I thought the article also said that we didn't have the technology to understand these perceptions/reactions accurately yet. As Kal suggests, it may not have been an auditory perception, but it does not necessarily follow that this perception does not have an effect on how we perceive music. For instance, as I mentioned before, many deaf people definitely have musical perception which is clearly not auditory, and has also not been entirely explained by science at this point.

And frankly, I am also very amused to see someone in the biomedical engineering field asserting that "if there is a topic that is unsettled or begs to be investigated then there is research being conducted on the topic and articles published on the research." This is simply absurd. Of course, I admit that I am not surprised that no one is willing to fund the research in question in this thread. Unfortunately in our society, not very much research is going to get done that doesn't make a financial profit somehow for someone somewhere.

Learsfool: Have you gone to the libraries to see if there is any research in this area? It appears that you are conceding that there is not. As far as your comment that you are surprised that a person with an engineering background would make the statement in my last post, maybe that surprise comes because your apparently have no scientific background. Try actually going and doing a literature search more extensive than googling "hearing and music" so that you have some idea as to what is actually researched by those in the area of physics, engineering, and medicine. You apparently have no idea. Your arguments for why, as you have conceded, there is no research is the old "bad money hungry science guys" variation of "bad big society" argument. You could try the Roswell secret hidden alien argument - about as valid and equally applicable to everything contrary to science (can work for ufo's, telekenisis, homeopathy, or any other crackpot idea). As far as your statement regarding profit, your definition of potential profit is so broad that it would be hard to imagine that establishing that people hear above 20 kHz would not be profitable. After all Sony, Miramax, and dozens of other companies could certainly find a way to turn such proof into profit. What is the vastly more reasonable explanation is that if there is no research in the area it is because people generally do not waste their time and resources investigating proven facts.

Addendum: correction to previous post. I stated "Have you gone to the libraries to see if there is any research in this area? It appears that you are conceding that there is not.". This should read "Have you gone to the libraries to see if there is any research to support your contention? It appears that you are conceding that there is not."

BTW, I believe that Oohashi's first studies were funded by Pioneer. This goes way back.

Kal

Musicnoise, there is no need to get nasty and insult mine or anyone else's intelligence in these forums. I am truly sorry if I offended you with the flippant nature of my previous post - it was not meant to be a personal attack; I was trying to be funny, very unsuccessfully I admit, and I was and still am exasperated by the fact that you are completely ignoring my real points. No, I am not a scientist, but I did work in the university library in school, helping the grad students with their music research (long before Google existed, and when the only computers were in the libraries, no one had their own yet). And I do have three full-time university professors in my immediate family, including two sociologists that do extensive research, one of them more than she teaches. I think you know very well what I meant by my comments, but you are obviously refusing, for whatever reasons, to take my points on the topic seriously, which is very disappointing. I really would like to hear exactly why, as a scientist, you think that there is no possible way the brain could perceive frequencies above 20kHz (for instance, what else would account for the increased brain activity in the 6 subjects?). As that article makes clear, it is NOT a proven scientific fact that we cannot - it merely stated that it was not a proven fact that we can. That was my main point.

The human brain is a much more sophisticated instrument than any piece of technology mankind has created, and there is a great deal about it we either don't know or can't prove. I have always contended that scientists and artists have very similar outlooks (and scientists are traditionally big supporters of the arts) - both are explorers, in a sense. However, I think in this case we are seeing a fundamental difference in temperament between you and I. You, the scientist, seem to be unwilling to even discuss seriously the possibility of something that is not definitely proven. I, the artist, am more positively imaginative about the limits of human possibility; perhaps overly so, but that remains to be seen.