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Learning to Listen: Neurological Evidence

Neurological evidence indicates we not only learn to listen, but actually tune our inner ear response based on neural feedback from the brain. We literally are able to actively tune our own hearing.  

When we listen for a flute for example, this is more than a conscious decision to focus on the flute. This creates neural impulses that actively tune ear cells to better hear the flute.  

This whole video is fascinating, but I want to get you hooked right away so check this out:  
https://youtu.be/SuSGN8yVrcU?t=1340

“Selectively changing what we’re listening to in response to the content. Literally reaching out to listen for things.”


Here’s another good one. Everyone can hear subtle details about five times as good as predicted by modeling. Some of us however can hear 50 times as good. The difference? Years spent learning to listen closely! https://youtu.be/SuSGN8yVrcU?t=1956

Learning to play music really does help improve your listening.  

This video is chock full of neurphysiological evidence that by studying, learning and practice you can develop the listening skills to hear things you literally could not hear before. Our hearing evolved millennia before we invented music. We are only just now beginning to scratch at the potential evolution has bestowed on us.


128x128millercarbon
holmz's avatar
holmz
2,328 posts
 
@millercarbon
When we listen for a flute for example, this is more than a conscious decision to focus on the flute. This creates neural impulses that actively tune ear cells to better hear the flute.

I find that claim pretty unbelievable.
Do you have a link?
Does it work only with the ears, or can I imagine other body parts and make them also perform new feats?
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon OP
12,531 posts
 
I find that claim pretty unbelievable.
Do you have a link?

Lord, help me. The bit in blue. At the top of the page. Yeah that bit, looks like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuSGN8yVrcU&t=1340s
Which is even cued up so you don't have to wait long to hear:
“Selectively changing what we’re listening to in response to the content. Literally reaching out to listen for things.”

Unbelievable. Indeed. Something sure is.
holmz's avatar
holmz
2,328 posts
 
Yeah but is not saying they change at cellular level.He is saying it more like a muscular deal.
nonoise's avatar
nonoise
10,885 posts
 
**** The question becomes, how does an audiophile who is not a musician, or who has no musical training, study, learn and practice his/her listening skills other than the ideas offered in this thread? ****
We enter this world with a super refined gift of a mechanism that we learn to ascribe words, definitions and understandings of what it is we hear. By the time we're 5 yrs old, some of us are using adult grammar, fully understanding it, for crying out loud.

Having a hobby which involves hearing is simply a plus and how we refine it is innate (you know, born with it). The fact that there's a science to it only validates it. 

I've never played French Horn or slept at a Holiday Inn but I've refined my hearing more than the average bear and don't require a PA system to properly ascertain what I hear. Like I said, it's innate, as is the refining process. Some are better at it than others but it's safe to say, most here get it, and they're not musicians. 

All the best,
Nonoise

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