Human ears try to move while listening to a sound, a recent study by Saarland University in Germany has revealed. Movement of ears is a common trait in animals, which not only help them focus on a particular noise, but also let them find the direction of the noise.
While human ears are believed to be far more static, the recent research by Andreas Schröer and his team has revealed otherwise.
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The study said this phenomenon is due to a “neural fossil" which is the result of traces of our ancestors’ ear-orienting system.
“It is believed that our ancestors lost their ability to move their ears about 25m years ago. Why, exactly, is difficult to say,” Schröer, the lead author of the research told The Guardian.
“However, we have been able to demonstrate that the neural circuits still seem to be present in some state, [that is] our brain retained some of the structures to move the ears, even though they are not useful any more Schröer added in his statement.
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The research team previously found that these muscle movements happen when the human focuses on the direction of the sound, but now it has been revealed that this happens when a human tries hard to listen a sound.
The reaseach team experimented on 20 adults who did not have any hearing problems. They were told to listen to an audiobook which was being played on a speaker. Simultaneously, a podcast was also played from the same location.
The team created three different scenarios for the experiment:
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1. Easiest - The sound of the podcast was lower than the audiobook. There was a large difference in the pitch of the voices as well.
2. Hardest - Two podcasts were played together which were, combined, louder than the audiobook.
3. In the last scenario, one podcast was played at a similar pitch as that of the audiobook and the second was kept playing in the previous pitch.
“We were interested in finding out if the auriculomotor system in humans is sensitive to effortful listening. Think about trying to understand what someone is saying in an almost empty restaurant, and then trying to understand someone in a very busy restaurant,” Schröer told The Guardian.
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Each participant was made hearing the three scenarios twice. this was further repeated after changing the locations of the speakers.
“Almost nobody [in the study] could voluntarily move their ears, so our results are not related to a person’s ability to do this,” said Schröer to The Guardian.
Although, the study was small and needed to be experimented on a larger group of people, the research team said it provided insights.
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(With inputs from agencies)