While we can’t physically pivot our ears towards sounds, our brains excel at honing in on them
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Many mammals, such as dogs, cats, and deer, possess the ability to direct their hearing. Humans lost this capability around 25 million years ago. Nonetheless, new findings suggest that although we lack these physical ear adjustments, our brains have developed compensatory skills to discern the most intense sounds in particular directions.
This study utilized mobile EEG to observe brain electrical activity as participants moved. Previously, EEG techniques involved participants sitting still with electrodes attached to their scalps. However, advancements in lighter, wireless EEG technology now enable measurements of brain activity during movement, creating links between behavior and brain function.
Research indicates that movement significantly influences brain function. “Active exploration enhances perception, fosters spatial mapping, and integrates multisensory information into a cohesive spatial awareness,” says Maren Schmidt Kassow from Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, who was not part of this study. “Cognition is fundamentally tied to behavior.”
Studies from Barbara Handel at the University of Würzburg, Germany, demonstrate that walking improves visual information processing, increasing the likelihood of noticing nearby objects. This enhancement typically diminishes when one is stationary. Her team has found that a similar principle applies to auditory perception; the brain continuously adjusts its focus to prioritize the most salient sounds.
During the experiment, 35 participants were outfitted with mobile EEG and motion sensors and instructed to navigate a figure-eight path while listening to a continuous audio stream through in-ear headphones.
The EEG data revealed significant boosts in auditory processing when participants moved compared to when they were standing still. As they turned, their brains further adapted, prioritizing sounds from the direction they were facing. Continuously along the path, the brain’s focus shifted from side to side as they turned, either panning from one speaker to another or physically orienting towards the sound source.
Team member Liyu Cao from Jiang Province, Hangzhou, China, speculates that this internal ear mobility may be an evolutionary adaptation for enhanced safety. “This could facilitate quicker reaction times and safer navigation in changing environments,” he states.
The findings could lead to advancements in filtering background noise based on a person’s walking direction, thereby improving navigational aids for visually impaired individuals and enhancing hearing aid functionality, according to Haendel.
Moreover, this research could shed light on why exercising outdoors seems to confer greater benefits for brain health and cognitive function compared to activities performed on treadmills or stationary bikes. “Movement dynamics extend beyond just muscle activity,” Handel remarks. “Your brain adapts not only how you move but also how it functions. It’s about harnessing that interaction for optimal performance.”
Visitors to flowers, including pollinators, generate distinct sounds through the movement of their wings during flight. These sounds play a significant role in fitness, providing crucial information to flowering plants and potentially influencing resource distribution while attracting pollinators. Recent research conducted by Professor Francesca Barbero from the University of Turin and her team examined the acoustic characteristics of the sounds made by various flight visitors, focusing on the Snapdragon (Anti-Ruhinam sp.) flowers in their natural habitat. Their findings indicate that behaviors such as hovering, landing, and takeoff yield unique acoustic signatures. Moreover, plants exhibit responses to vibroacoustic stimuli from these pollinators, hinting at possible adaptive reactions.
Recording devices, models of Anti-Ruhinam plants, and an approaching Rhodanthidium staticum bee. Image credit: A lively lab.
When pollinators visit flowers, they generate various distinct sounds, ranging from the flapping of wings while hovering to the sounds of landing and taking off.
Nonetheless, these sounds are relatively subtle compared to other vibrations and acoustics present in insect life, leading researchers to overlook the acoustic signals linked to wing and body movements in these insects.
Professor Barbero and her collaborators have investigated these signals, creating a non-invasive and effective approach to monitor impacts on pollinator communities as well as plant biology and ecology.
“The coevolution between plants and their pollinators has largely been explored through visual and olfactory cues, despite emerging evidence that both insects and plants are capable of sensing, producing, or transmitting vibroacoustic signals,” Professor Barbero stated.
They discovered that the sounds of these efficient pollinators led snapdragons to enhance sugar and nectar production, even prompting changes in gene expression related to sugar transport and nectar formation.
These plant responses could serve as survival strategies and coevolutionary tactics, particularly as they can influence how long pollinators linger and their overall fidelity.
“The ability to recognize approaching pollinators through unique vibroacoustic signals may represent an adaptive strategy for plants,” Professor Barbero added.
“By responding to suitable vibroacoustic cues (like those from effective pollinators), plants can bolster reproductive success by encouraging favorable pollinator behavior.”
While it’s evident that lively sounds can elicit plant responses, it’s yet undetermined if plant acoustics can also influence insect behavior.
“If insect reactions to these responses are confirmed, we could harness sound to enhance economically significant plants and crops and increase their appeal to pollinators,” Professor Barbero mentioned.
The research team is continuously analyzing and comparing snapdragon reactions to various pollinators and nectar robbers.
“The myriad ways plants can discern biological factors, including beneficial and harmful insects, neighboring plants, and abiotic signals like temperature, drought, and wind, are genuinely remarkable,” Professor Barbero remarked.
Dolphin’s mouth. The whale sings. Fishcloak, chirp, Grant, ham, groans. However, in sea chatting, up until now, one voice was missing.
Sharks have long been considered quiet killers of the water. However, scientists at the University of Auckland in New Zealand recently recorded a rig shark, or Mastel Slenticratus, to create a sharp click by combining the teeth, according to findings published in the journal. Royal Society Open Science on Wednesday. They believe this is the first time a shark has actively made noise.
Chief investigator Karolyn Nieder was the first to hear the sound while studying the shark’s hearing abilities. While she was dealing with one shark, it clicked and snapped a similar sound to the sound of an electric spark, she said.
The noise came from the Rig shark, a rather small shark common in waters around New Zealand. It grows up to 5 feet and feeds mainly on crustaceans. It is eaten by larger shark species and New Zealanders who use it to make fish and chips.
Dr. Nieder was surprised when he heard the noise.
Other sea creatures have mechanisms to make noise. For example, fish have a gas-filled sac, a swimming bladder, which is used for buoyancy but can be used as a type of drum. Many fish have muscles that can vibrate the swimming bladder in a manner similar to the human vocal cords.
However, the sharks were “thought to be silent and could not actively produce sound,” Dr. Nieder said.
In this study, she and her co-authors observed the behavior of ten rig sharks housed in tanks equipped with underwater microphones. They discovered that all ten sharks begin to create click noise when they move between tanks or are held gently.
On average, the shark clicks nine times at 20-second intervals, and researchers believe they made noises by stitching the teeth together.
They didn’t make any noise while feeding or swimming, making scientists believe it is more likely to click when emphasizing or surprised, not as a way of communicating with each other.
“I think it’s likely that they’ll make those noises when they’re attacked,” Dr. Nieder said, adding that many other fish will snap their teeth and jaws to stop or distract predators.
It was unclear whether the shark could hear the clicks themselves. Did they make the sound in the wild or just get caught? And whether they intentionally made it or whether it was a side effect of their reaction to being surprised, Dr. Nieder said.
Christine Elbe, director of the Marine Science and Technology Centre at Curtin University in Australia, said the study expanded in the growing field of research into how marine animals make and hear sounds.
“Once you start watching, there are more and more species that use sounds,” she said.
So it wasn’t surprising to find that sharks could make a fuss, she said.
But she says, “I think it’s important in the sense that it completely underestimates communication between animals and environmental sensing capabilities, and also completely underestimates the way noise affects it.”
The Budgerigars are some of the most fashionable birds, and it is reflected in their brains. The Budgie Brains contain maps of voice sounds similar to those found in the human brain, not seen in other birds.
Budgerigars (Melopstitacus undulatus), also known as a paraquiet, is a small parrot native to Australia. They are epic vocal learners and can mimic a variety of sounds, including human speech. The boudgie, known as the pack, had a vocabulary of about 1,728 words. According to the Guinness World Records. “The ability to mimic phonetically is very rare in the animal kingdom,” Long says.
and Zetian Yang, Additionally, NYU medical schools used silicon probes for a long time to record electrical activity in the Budgies' brains. They focused on a part of the forebrain, the central nucleus of the forebrain horn, which was known to be involved in motor control of vocalization. When Budgies made the call, Long and Yang tracked how their electrical activity had changed.
“Our research was the first to measure parrot brain activity during vocalization,” Long says.
The pair discovered neurons in the central nucleus of the anterior horn thyroid. “There are cells that are active because of consonants,” Long says. Others make vowels, but some are active for high-pitched sounds, others for low pitch.
This brain structure is compared to a keyboard. “There's this kind of key, or in this case, a set of brain cells, and you can represent each of these vocal outcomes and play whatever it wants,” he says. “What the parrot presented is this beautiful and elegant solution to creating vocal sounds.” The human brain has a similar vocal map.
Long and Yang repeated the experiment with a zebra finch (taeniopygia guttata), not vocal mimic. “They have one song they learn,” Long says. “It's about two seconds, sometimes less.” It takes several months to perfect.
Unlike the Budgerigars, the Zebra Finch showed no signs of a “map” of the sound of the brain's voice. Instead, “A Zebra Finch develops chords that are almost almost inexplicable for this song,” says Long. He says that Budgie's brain uses a simple, intuitive system to generate complex calls, while Zebra Finch Brain uses a complex system to make something simple.
“It shows that neural activity and associated vocal behavior are closer to parrots and humans than songbirds and parrots.” Erich Jarvis At Rockefeller University in New York.
“Almost everything we know about the detailed mechanistic basis of learned vocalization comes from several species of songbirds singing relatively simple songs.” Jesse Goldberg At Cornell University in New York. “The parrot therefore offers an incredible opportunity to study both the mechanisms and evolution of complex vocal learning and production.”
I say there are several reasons why I evolved imitation. Zhilei Zhao At Cornell University. One is courtship. “Women actually prefer men with the ability to copy,” he says, and if a man loses his ability, “they are more likely to fool him.” Also, the Budgies have a very dynamic social life. “Form small groups for several days.” Once the group is established, members begin to create unique “contact calls.” “People think it might be something like a password for this group,” says Zhao.
Other skilled mimics may have similar vocal maps in their brains. “My very strong speculation is that other parrots have the same functionality, but they are simply not explored.” He also doubts something similar, the Lyrebirds, a phenomenal mimic that can even mimic artificial sounds like camera shutters.
In the long run, I hope that studying how boudgies produce sounds for a long time will help people understand language disorders. People with strokes often experience aphasia. I can't call the correct words in my head. “You reach for those words and it’s not there,” Long says. “Now we have the opportunity to fight to understand what we think is at the root of many communication disorders that affect people in devastating ways.”
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to walk into a sweaty, dusty club on a desert planet from Star Wars? What would be played on the radio in a casino on a planet like Las Vegas? What do Tatooine’s merchants and villains listen to when they’re not working on moisture farms or fighting off Tusken Raiders? Cody Matthew Johnson’s life these past few years has been spent pondering such questions. The composer and artist has previously worked in video game music, including Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, Bayonetta, and the cult indie Akira Kurosawa’s sidescroller Trek to Yomi. Surely is credited to. However, in Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws, he was tasked with creating music for a shady criminal organization.
“While the scope of musical expression within the world was limited in the original trilogy, this was an opportunity to legitimately explore the music of the time on a broader scale,” Johnson said. It was offered for his work in The Outlaws. “Creating bar music in the style of the original trilogy has its own set of ‘rules’, and while this game is certainly set in that era, we have was only encouraged. slightly Inspired by the cantina music from the original trilogy.”
We’re all familiar with John Williams’ 1977 Cantina Band music (unfortunately, the genre was commonly known as “jazz”), but it’s mainstream. Matthew Johnson digs deeper, exploring the dirt under the fingernails of Star Wars dunces and getting a real feel for the culture of those forgotten by the Empire and too demoralized to join the Rebellion. There was a need. He had to make different music for a world we were already familiar with.
Cody Matthew Johnson, composer, songwriter, producer of Star Wars Outlaws Photo: Knocking Bird
“The galaxy is vast, typically with thousands (some say millions) of planets, and the last 40 years of in-universe music have only scratched the surface of the possibilities., was not only about the main character Kay Vess and what she listens to, but also the underworld subcultures she exists in, such as Toshara, Akiba, Tatooine, and Kijimi. Not only music, but also music. created By that subculture.”
The result is a full album’s worth of tracks, over an hour long, and more than 10% of all diegetic or “in-universe” Star Wars music ever created. To my ears, Songs from the Underworld has elements of ELO, Bonobo, Snarky Puppy, Kraftwerk, and Ry Cooder. It bounces between genres and utilizes weird and wonderful instrumentation. Matthew Johnson is just as happy to use the didgeridoo as he is the guitar, which is not surprising considering he is a trained ethnomusicologist.
“All kinds of sounds, textures and instruments were on the table: spider monkeys, seals, vintage carbon phone microphones, cimbalom, yair tambour, furushi, shakuhachi, gamelan arranged on a drum set…” he says of this Maxima. Let’s talk about rhythm. “I searched every nook and cranny for inspiration to best represent these worlds, and every once in a while, I heard the sounds of gamelan, trash cans, didgeridoos, and kazoos being smashed together.” Just right For the outlaws of Star Wars.”
Matthew Johnson was “making it hard on himself” to avoid having “funny alien music” playing in every den of scum and villains where the player controls Kay Vess. He seriously considered and thought about the sounds of instruments within the world that the inhabitants of these worlds could physically play. He describes “the tonal elements of different instruments, the emotions and symbolic meanings they evoke, and how they can be combined to create instruments that may have been created or inspired by the world’s natural resources and cultures.” I had to think about whether I could create sound.
“I heard the gamelan, trash can, didgeridoo and kazoo being smashed together.” It’s just right”… Star Wars Outlaws. Photo: Ubisoft
For example, he explains in great detail that the sympathetic, resonant buzz of the sitar, the aggressive attack of the drumsticks of the saz and bouzouki, must be considered in conjunction with the playing style of the nylon-string guitar and charango of flamenco. I’m doing it. All these incredibly special sounds combine to give you a unique melodic instrumental sound that you would get on a desert planet. This is also the case with the track “If These Sands Could Speak.”
To create the collaborative spirit and “all in this together” attitude at the heart of so much alternative underground music, Matthew Johnson needed a band. “The joy of life is being able to collaborate with friends,” he explains. “It was a dream gig for everyone involved in this project, including musicians, engineers and instrument designers.The joy of playing and creating music is something we all share. That’s why we decided to dedicate our lives to this. Projects like Star Wars Outlaws combine my background as a record producer, performing musician, recording artist, and video game composer. , the perfect instrument for making music feel It’s like having a party.”
That’s right. The diegetic music in Star Wars Outlaws complements the equally great original score by Wilbert Roget II, providing some great musical ebbs and flows rarely seen in open-world games. The score is designed to be heard by you, the player. The music on the radio and in the bar is for Kay Vess. I think Outlaws is one of the best examples of how in-game music can add texture and depth, even to a world with as much history and lore as Star Wars.
“‘The Outlaws’ is the perfect vessel to show how music can reveal narrative information without literally conveying it,” says Johnson. “As Kay walks down the hallway and turns a corner, she hears the faint sound of a reverbed subwoofer hitting a kick drum. As she approaches the door at the end of the hallway, more musical elements can be heard. When Kei opens the door, music floods her body, and there’s a band on stage, dancing patrons, dim neon lights, and two stories of fog throughout. An underground nightclub has appeared.
“Even before they arrive at the club, the music, and equally importantly the implementation of music into the game itself, reveals a lot about our setting to the player.”
Songs from the Underworld is one of my favorite albums of the year so far. For me, it gives me a sense of what it’s like to be planetside in Star Wars, what it’s like to actually put yourself in the shoes of characters who live and breathe different atmospheres.
Star Wars Outlaws is available now on PS5, Xbox One, and PC. the song of the underworld Available on Spotify.
Carrion crow (Crow) It can count up to four times based on visual and auditory cues and control the number of times it vocalizes. study Published in the journal Science.
Carrion crow (Crow). Image courtesy of Andreas Nieder.
Counting out loud (e.g., reciting 1, 2, 3, etc.) requires an understanding of quantity and controlled, purposeful vocalization.
Humans use language to count and communicate quantity symbolically, which is a complex skill developed during childhood.
Before acquiring symbolic counting, where specific words are associated with specific quantities, infants produce several sounds that correspond to the quantities of objects they see and use these sounds as acoustic counting to communicate the corresponding numbers.
This early human behavior reflects a non-symbolic capacity shared with animals.
Some animals have demonstrated the ability to distinguish between different numbers of objects and communicate information through different numbers of vocalizations.
However, it is unclear whether animals other than humans have the ability to count by intentionally making a specific number of vocalizations.
“The carrion crow, a member of the songbird group, is known not for the beauty of its song but for its incredible learning ability,” Professor Andreas Nieder, researcher University of Tübingen.
“For example, previous studies have shown that birds understand counting.”
“Plus, they have incredible vocal control. They can control exactly whether or not they're going to chirp.”
In this study, Professor Nieder and his co-authors investigated whether carrion crows can control the rate at which they vocalize and solve complex vocal response tasks.
The researchers trained three crows to produce one to four vocalizations in response to both visual (colored numbers) and auditory (distinct sounds) cues associated with numerical values.
On each trial, birds were required to produce a target number of vocalizations and indicate the end of the vocalization sequence by pecking the target.
The researchers found that crows can successfully and purposefully produce a specific number of vocalizations in response to specific cues, a level of control that has not yet been observed in other animals.
The birds used a non-symbolic approximate number system and planned the number of vocalizations before initiating them.
Further analysis showed that the timing and characteristics of the first vocalization predicted the number of subsequent vocalizations, and different acoustic features of the vocalizations indicated their number in a given sequence.
“Our results show that humans are not the only ones who can do this,” Professor Nieder said.
“In principle, this could enable advanced communication with crows.”
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Diana A. Liao othersThe year is 2024. Crows “count” the number of cries they make. Science 384(6698):874-877; doi:10.1126/science.adl0984
Danionella cerebrumThis translucent fish species, only 12 mm long, produces high-amplitude sounds exceeding 140 dB (1 µPa relative at a distance of 1 body length). This is comparable to a jet engine taking off at a distance of 100 meters.
Danionella cerebrum It has a pair of extrinsic indirect muscles that house the drumming cartilage. When the sonic muscles contract, they pull the fifth rib forward, pulling on the cartilage and increasing tension. When the cartilage is suddenly released, it rapidly impinges on the swim bladder, producing a short, loud pulse. Bursts of pulses are produced by bilateral alternating or unilateral muscle contractions. In summary, this mechanism allows for loud, stereotypical sounds elicited in structured sequences, making it unique for vertebrate acoustic communication and ultrafast skeletal locomotion that exceeds the limitations of muscle contraction velocity. It will be a solution. Image credit: Ralf Britz, Senckenberg Natural History Collections.
“Oyster oyster shrimp can make crackling noises of up to 250 dB with their claws,” he said. Dr. Ralph Blitzichthyologist at the Senckenberg Natural History Collection.
“The flightless kakapo’s mating call can reach 130 dB, and elephants can make up to 125 dB of noise with their trunks.
“Fish, on the other hand, are generally considered to be fairly quiet members of the animal kingdom.”
“But certain fish species can be surprisingly noisy. For example, male redfin midshipmanfish attract females with an audible vibrato of about 100 Hz and 130 dB.”
In a new study, Dr. Blitz and his colleagues looked into Danionella cerebruma small teleost fish with the smallest brain of any known vertebrate.
“This small fish can emit over 140dB of sound at a distance of 10-12mm, which is comparable to the noise of a plane taking off at a distance of 100m, which is highly unusual for such a fish. 'It's a small size,' Dr. Blitz said.
“We sought to understand how the fish manage this and what mechanisms are involved in this outcome.”
Using a combination of high-speed video, microcomputed tomography, gene expression analysis, and differential methods, the researchers discovered that: Danionella cerebrum Males have unique sound-producing equipment, including drumming cartilage, specialized ribs, and fatigue-resistant muscles.
“This device accelerates the drumming cartilage with a force of more than 2,000g and slams it against the swim bladder, producing rapid and loud pulses,” Dr. Blitz said.
“These pulses chain together to produce calls for bilateral alternating or unilateral muscle contractions.”
Due to its small size and lifelong light transmission, Danionella cerebrum It is a new model organism for biomedical research.
This species lives in the shallow, murky waters of Myanmar.
“It is likely that competition between males in this visually restricted environment contributed to the development of specialized mechanisms for acoustic communication,” Dr Blitz said.
The results of this study cast doubt on the conventional concept that the speed of skeletal movement in vertebrates is limited by muscle movement.
“Understanding unusual adaptations Danionella cerebrum “This extends our knowledge of animal locomotion and highlights the remarkable diversity of propulsion mechanisms in different species,” the authors said.
“This contributes to a broader understanding of evolutionary biology and biomechanics.”
“Sounds made by others are Danionella The species has not yet been studied in detail. It would be interesting to know how their sound production mechanisms differ and how those differences relate to evolutionary adaptations. ”
“Combined with its lifelong transparency, this genus Danionella This provides a unique opportunity to compare the neural mechanisms underlying sound production between different species. ”
of study Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Verity ANO Cook other. 2024. A superfast sound production mechanism in one of the smallest vertebrates. PNAS 121 (10): e2314017121; doi: 10.1073/pnas.2314017121
2023 was the hottest year ever recorded on Earth. This included oceans around the world, where records fell like dominoes. Last week, about 5,000 scientists gathered in New Orleans for the American Geophysical Union’s biennial marine science conference. Environmental reporter James Dineen was there to take the temperatures of researchers who have been observing changes occurring in the ocean. You can listen to his segment around 05:00 in the embedded player or read the transcript below.
transcript
James Dineen: There was one thing on everyone’s mind at the world’s largest gathering of marine scientists. It’s heat.
England: “Warming over the past few decades, especially in 2023, is sweeping the sector.”
James: Matthew England is an oceanographer at the University of New South Wales in Australia. He was one of thousands of marine scientists who gathered in New Orleans to discuss the latest research on what’s happening in the ocean.
There will be presentations on everything from new species of octopus to robot flying fish. However, rising temperatures are gaining attention.
England: “The burning of fossil fuels, the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we know that it is trapped heat, and we know that more than 90 per cent of it escapes into the ocean. I know.”
Last year’s average sea surface temperature broke previous records, rising about 0.2 degrees Celsius above 2022 levels. The amount of heat in the ocean at a depth of 2,000 meters also broke a new record. Then, an abnormal marine heat wave occurred from the Atlantic Ocean to the Sea of Japan.
England: “This was the first year on record where it was difficult to find waters that were not warmer than average.”
Researchers here are working to understand the causes and consequences of that fever.
Let’s consider the mystery of the extent of sea ice in Antarctica. It was surprisingly strong until 2016, but it declined sharply that year. The record low was set again in 2022, but then again in 2023 when the Antarctic winter ice did not recover.
But perhaps the most obvious victim of 2023 temperatures was coral reefs. Large areas of coral, especially around the Florida Keys in the Gulf of Mexico, bleached and died.
Ian Enox of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration studies coral reefs in the Keys. He says seeing so many corals die was a painful experience, but it only drove home the urgency for action.
Enoch: “Some people will see this and feel downtrodden. And I’ve seen people come together and be motivated to actually do something meaningful and be able to confront this issue head on. I’ve seen the exact opposite situation.”
Amy Aprile of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts is working on different approaches to restoring coral ecosystems. There are many ideas. But one of her new approaches her team is working on is underwater use. sound.
Apryl: Sound is a basic signal used by coral reef organisms. We understand that it is part of their communication strategy and what they rely on to create a healthy environment. ”
In tests on coral reefs in the Virgin Islands, researchers found that broadcasting underwater recordings of healthy coral reef ecosystems increased the rate at which coral larvae attached to the reef. This could help make coral restoration more effective in the face of rising temperatures.
Apryl: This year has been unprecedented. But the thing that sticks with me and keeps me optimistic is that we’re just getting started and we’re just scratching the surface in putting these solutions into action.
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