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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.


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pedroeb
493 posts
 
Exceptionally interesting and informative.

As tvad mentioned, the brain is very adept at "filling in the gaps".

Now that's something we don't want here.

Perhaps the solution is as simple as closing the eyes so that everything else is shut out and totally focusing on what is being heard. In effect, shutting down all other senses and appreciating the sound.
femoore12's avatar
femoore12
683 posts
 
@hilde45
 At some odds with your very valid point is that there are musicians who often don’t have very good systems or care very much about sound quality in audio systems. That may merely be because they just don’t care about audio quality sound -- which would be weird -- or that they listen in some other way. But the notion that if one is a musician they already know how to listen as an audiophile is contradicted in a lot of cases, and that presents a puzzle.
I agree with your comment. My brother is a classically trained opera singer (since retired) and he never owned any audio systems that would be considered audiophile quality. He systems were always the most basic that were available. He always told me that reproduced music never came close to the real thing. I don’t have the years of stage experience that he had nor the formal training, but I will admit my home system doesn’t replicate the sound that I found myself immersed in while performing on stage. I am not trying to replicate that level of immersion at home (since I think it’s impossible), but I do consider my system successful if I can see the sound.

Thanks!
hilde45's avatar
hilde45
4,819 posts
 
@femoore12 I have a friend who's a jazz trumpeter and another who plays classical piano. Both understand there's something to be experienced with a better system, but they're both so used to listening *through* the aural presentation to the musical meaning, that they don't see why their attention would want to get hung up at that level. Almost like a poetry fanatic who couldn't care less about the font used. This is not how I see it -- I see the musical meaning and the aural presentation as entangled -- but that may be because they hear the musical meaning more acutely than I do (being a novice at that).
dwytopx
10 posts
 
According to the latest research the animal with brainwave patterns most closely resembling a human is the hyena. According to science (all genuflect now) light is both a waveform and a particle at the same time. Science is a cult religion and a stupid one at that. And what is all this flap about evolution? Less than 1% have even read the origin of the species, for in the introduction he says that his theory rests entirely upon gradualism which has been in the dust bin for at least 50 years, not to mention what even he calls the problem of the angiosperms. My wish is that you enjoy the music whether played, live or reproduced. 
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