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
I LOVE this sort of thing. Anything neurological fascinates me. When it combines with our music hobby, all the more so. From my own reading, it does seem likely that timing is what continues to separate vinyl from digital. Now that we have begun to recognize this, it will just be a matter of time to create digital systems that are cognizant of the very small intervals to which our auditory system is sensitive. 
Really believe the main trick to enjoy hifi is to enjoy it for itself, it is not live music and never will be. As a reviewer said recently all hifi is fake just find the fake you like.
@henry53, for the sort of music I enjoy, I agree with you. As more popular music is computer driven electronica and voices are autotuned, live performances for this genre are themselves fake, and so perhaps hifi in that case is less fake than it is when I play my Jazz and Classical records. Just playing here...
Both realism and abstraction have their qualities, neither trumps one another and often the grey area between the two is magical. 
I am a neuroscientist and molecular biologist (PhD). Yes, listening is an acquired skill but individuals also differ in their innate (i.e., genetic) ability to discriminate different frequencies. The human auditory system is by far the most critical element in the high end "audio system" - the piece of wetware that is more important than any hardware component.