When many animals hear a sound, they prick up their ears to listen more closely. Unfortunately, we lost that ability during our evolutionary journey becoming the boring humans we are today. However, while our ears don't prick, we still have the vestigial ear muscle that does it in other animals. (It's the same muscle some people use to wiggle their ears.) And according to new research, electrical signals still activate that muscle when some listeners exert effort to listen to a particular sound.
"In this experiment, we recorded from two different ear muscles," says University of Missouri psychophysiologist Steven Hackley. "One that raises the ears up, and one that pulls the ear back."
Eventually, their experimental approach could be used to better measure the effort someone has to make in order to hear something. According to Alexander Francis—a professor of speech, language, and hearing at Purdue University—such a system could potentially be integrated into hearing aids.
From NPR:
Even with hearing aids, says Francis, the work of trying to listen can sometimes be so exhausting and frustrating that people just give up.
"We have very, very good hearing aids now, they can provide very, very good amplification, and yet people still aren't happy wearing them sometimes," says Francis.
If a hearing aid could monitor activity in these vestigial muscles around the ear, the device could potentially get information about how a person was experiencing the act of listening and then make adjustments accordingly.
Previously:
• I hear phantom music when I use a white noise machine, and I'm not alone: understanding auditory pareidolia
• DIY method for transmitting audio in large spaces directly to people's hearing aids