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Ear muscle we thought humans didn't use activates when people listen hard
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- feverzsj 2y agoSo, movies are actually right.
- mathieuh 2y agoWhenever I hear a noise behind me this muscle reflexively flexes quite hard, especially if it's a sudden noise that makes me jump.
- lttlrck 2y agoYes. It's quite a distinct part of my being startled by an unexpected sound, similar to hairs raising on the back on my neck.
- kennyadam 2y agoSame. Is this something not everyone experiences or just never really comes up in conversation much I wonder?
- dillz 2y agoHad to scroll surprisingly far to find this comment thread. My ears sometimes react the same way on unexpected noises in a silent environment. However, I can not move my ears voluntarily, none at all.
- datavirtue 2y agoAll I can picture right now is a Ferengi.
- mmastrac 2y agoI trained myself to wiggle one ear as a kid and it's exactly like this. The muscle is much stronger in that ear and there's a weird reflex that when something startles me from behind, the same muscle that makes the ear wiggle triggers. It happens in the untrained ear as well. Weird phenomenon.
- Gys 2y agoYou trained it? I can wiggle each ear very visibly (and both). I hardly ever do but as I remember most people can’t. So i always assumed it was a DNA thing.
- noelwelsh 2y agoNot the person you're replying to, but is also trained myself to do it. I basically touched the area where the muscle is, tried to activate it ... time passes ... and some unconscious process figured it out. Now, as a responsible parent, I use my super power to troll my kids.
- justanotherjoe 2y agoIt could be both
- ABS 2y agoI too trained it when I was in primary school after seeing a class mate do it. And like OP I eventually managed to control one ear (right) but not the other, even to this day 40 years later
- unsupp0rted 2y agoSame here, same ear
- RajT88 2y agoI can twitch my left ear independently from my right. But not the right one independently. I'm sure it means something. Both at the same time is easy.
- helge9210 2y agoScience around human body movements is in its infancy. Motion capture can't differentiable various muscle group activations, resulting in the same motion pattern. Electric activity sensors are not sensitive enough to capture individual muscle movements. And there are not enough interesting subjects (top athletes, performers etc) available to scientists to improve models and methods.
- djtango 2y agoIt's funny because these developments come at a time where a large proportion of the world no longer really uses their body for their living. I wonder how different our ancestors perceived the world when their survival depended on their athleticism and keen senses. What knowledge and skills were common that have been lost to us now? There have been articles on HN about scientists "discovering" humans can exert control over their pupils and more and more scientists are "accepting" that echolocation in humans is real and learnable.
- xg15 2y agoThere are some fascinating stories about kids abducted and raised by wolves - who, when they were eventually found and brought back into human society, showed seemingly "superhuman" senses of hearing and smell. The senses became more normal the longer they spent time in human society however. Not sure how credible those stories are, but if they are, this would indicate that human senses are a lot more flexible than we believe they are.
- sriacha 2y agoOne of my favorite examples is the possibility of humans to have magnetoreception.
- roenxi 2y agoI'm finding the headline is remarkably annoying. Evolutionary pressure is pretty brutal to things that actually aren't used - building a muscle takes energy and is one more thing for the body to maintain. I don't see how it is fair to say "thought humans didn’t use". It is always "if it has a use, we aren't sure what it is yet". Nature isn't a perfect architect but the odds are just much better that the use is still to be discovered than that truly useless bits of the body exist.
- lgeorget 2y agoWhen I read "humans didn't use", I understand that other animals with which we share close common ancestors still use it. Evolutionary pressure can make organs go into disuse so it makes sense that we end up with unused organs.
- parineum 2y agoEvolutionary pressure also would select for not wasting energy on a useless organ.
- _Algernon_ 2y agoThe selective pressure of small unused organs may be very low and virtually disappear in the stochasticity of natural selection. It may take a long time for such elements to disappear completely
- roenxi 2y agoA 1% reduction in body mass is a huge advantage evolutionary, especially since rather than being cut completely that mass could be repurposed as more muscle for competing or more fat for lean times. For something in very recent evolutionary history (talking the last few thousand years), yeah sure the pressure might not have optimised a wasted organ out. But for any random organ? Nah, they probably have a purpose and we don't know what it is yet. Otherwise there is a big advantage to removing 'useless' bits. Evolutionary processes do however love little random tweaks and whatnot because they serve a useful purpose in weird edge cases and it is much more likely we're looking at one of them in any particular case.
- nusl 2y agoThere's a lot of stuff that does something after we thought it didn't. I don't quite trust folk when they say "Oh, that's just there in your body but it doesn't do anything." I get that some stuff genuinely doesn't because evolution deprecated it, but others we might not yet understand well enough to know this for sure.
- ajb 2y agoA lot of this comes from the assumption that our organs each have a single purpose, so if the obvious purpose is not relevant in humans then the organ is useless. But most organs serve multiple purposes.
- phkahler 2y ago>> I don't quite trust folk when they say "Oh, that's just there in your body but it doesn't do anything." If you expand that to "You don't need that" it covers the appendix, spleen, tonsils, wisdom teeth (even incisors can be removed to make room) and probably some other things. I'm in favor of keeping all your parts unless absolutely necessary, as all of these things seem to have at least marginal purpose.
- kstrauser 2y agoI generally agree, but: 1. They used to yank everyone’s tonsils at any provocation. There was a swing back to trying never to take them. I wish my pediatrician would’ve had mine removed after my nth tonsillitis so I didn’t have to have them out in my 30s. That was fun. 2. Having had an emergency appendectomy, I’m sympathetic to the notion of proactively snipping them any time you happen to be in there anyway. Getting a hernia fixed? Oh hey, let’s grab the appy while we’re at it!
- simianparrot 2y agoExcept the appendix is an important organ. It has a high concentration of immune tissue and supports the immune system in the gut, and it's also a "safe house" for beneficial bacteria in the case of food poisoning or other gut "clearing" events. It absolutely should not be just nipped out proactively.
- desibanda 2y agoI know how to look hard by squinting my eyes and trying to focus, talk hard by speaking as loudly as I can or smell hard by breathing in as much as I can, but how do you listen hard?
- mkoubaa 2y agoTry explaining in words how to raise a single eyebrow to someone who can't. Tactile intelligence and semantic intelligence do not overlap
- HelloMcFly 2y agoI've gotten at least two people (youths) to be able to raise a single eyebrow by placing their finger on their eyebrows and feeling their muscles activate as they raise and lower both eyebrows. Keeping your fingers on the eyebrow muscles, it's almost like your brain can start to "see" the two distinct muscles. It didn't take them too long (days not weeks, not hours) to be able to raise an eyebrow. There's probably a biological component to it to, I'm not saying this will work for everyone because it didn't work for my spouse.
- mkoubaa 2y agoPart of the teaching was physical. Hard to do it with words alone
- philipwhiuk 2y agoQuiet batpeople.
- blarg1 2y agoMy ears tire when hearing foreign languages spoken, it feels like my ears keep automatically trying to discern each word as if I might understand them.
- kennyadam 2y agoStapedius-mediated phonemic saturation is almost unheard of by most people.
- EvanAnderson 2y agoThere's money here to whoever can capture the activation of these muscles to control prosthetic cat ears. At the rate I see them the prosthetic cat ear market must be double-digit billions. Seriously, though, it makes me wonder if the activation of these muscles could be used in a hearing aid application. Why not add a couple rear-facing highly directional mics and use these muscles to control their gain?
- hyperbovine 2y agoI have this weird muscle in my ears I can flex to block out (or at least lessen) loud noises. I've never been able to explain it adequately to anyone, or find out what is going on, but it's absolutely real and not just, wait for it, .. in my head :-)
- gorlilla 2y agoI tried explaining this to my wife and she thought I was crazy. Turns out she was right, but not for this reason.
- fumar 2y agoIf I do that, I hear a rumbling. I never used it to block out sound.
- hinkley 2y agoAccording to the Wikipedia article it may be involuntary.
- mimentum 2y agoSame. Wonder how common this is.
- Tor3 2y agoSame here, I hear a rumbling. I do occasionally use this to block or lower very loud (potentially hearing-damaging) sounds if there are no other means available.
- wkjagt 2y agoI can do the rumbling too. And a clicking too. I can even make someone else hear my ear clicking by having them press their ear to mine. I wonder if that's causes by the same thing.
- NitpickLawyer 2y ago> And a clicking too. You should get a check-up, when I heard clicking I had some wax accumulation.
- teeray 2y agoThere’s muscles in my ears that I have conscious control of that don’t really seem to do anything other than make a rumbling sound. They were fun to use when I was young playing, since I could make explosion sounds and get a realistic rumbling bass too. Are these the same muscles?
- jrmg 2y agoSeems like not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensor_tympani_muscle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensor_tympani_muscle I can do this too. The article mentions it being “rare”, but it sounds like it hasn’t really been studied so might actually be common. From casual discussion with friends in the past I suspect it’s more like 30-50% of people.
- xg15 2y agoSame here and I always sort of assumed this was a normal thing of the human body. I'm kinda shocked to learn that many people can't do it. What kind of muscle can switch between voluntary or involuntary depending on the person?
- fluoridation 2y agoOh, so that's what that is? Crazy. Subjectively (besides the sound) it just felt like a vague pressure in my head, near the neck, so I never could figure out what the hell it was I was doing.
- anotherevan 2y agoAs the article mentions, the tensor tympani muscles are also involved in hyperacusis, which is an inability to tolerate sound at volumes most people have no issue with. One of my kids has this. The best analogy I've found is it is like standing out in the sun when you already have sunburn.
- _fs 2y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/earrumblersassemble/ https://www.reddit.com/r/earrumblersassemble/
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- buildsjets 2y agoMost people may not use these muscles, but I do, to adjust the focus of my bifocals as needed. Zoom and enhance!
- alexjm 2y agoThat was how I learned to tense my ear muscles -- because I could see they made my glasses shift on my face.
- otikik 2y agoI ... thought this was common knowledge. I learnt how to wiggle my ears when I got startled by a book falling from a shelf and my ears instinctively "raised". Picture a dog going from "idling" to "alert", with the ears pointing up. It was like that, but for humans. I then said "Ooooh, so that's how you do it". There has never been a doubt in my mind that the muscle is connected to "alert, listen closely".
- tim333 2y agoThere's a lot of odd stuff we're gradually figuring. Also interesting, some of the hair cells in the ear act as amplifiers and you can hook them up to an electrical sound signal and have them dance around: https://youtu.be/pij8a8aNpWQ https://youtu.be/pij8a8aNpWQ I suspect the standard explanation for that as given under the youtube video: > Since the amplitude, and hence the mechanical energy, of airborne sounds is tiny, the cochlea mechanically amplifies the incoming vibrations. is wrong as it doesn't really make sense from an engineering point of view - if you've already detected the sound to activate the hair cell then that job's done. My theory is they actively damp down the large vibrations so you can pick up the small ones. There's a 10^5 amplitude difference between large and small.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago> the cochlea mechanically amplifies the incoming vibrations Is that even possible in principle? Amplifying requires adding energy, it has to be either provided from somewhere else or redistributed from other parts of the input. EDIT: Aha, but apparently this system is not a passive amplifier at all! Per Wikipedia[0], this is an active, electromechanical amplifier, which makes the explanation you quoted more reasonable (if not accurate). -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_amplifier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_amplifier but the core observation is also stated in summary here[1]. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_of_Corti#Cochlear_amplification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_of_Corti#Cochlear_amplif...
- philomath_mn 2y agoIdk man, survival seems like a pretty blunt selection force for such an intricate mechanism
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Ylpertnodi 2y agoThe angle you tilt your head to, to REALLY listen intently is known as "Mozart's Incline". Honest.
- Tool_of_Society 2y agoAm I the only one that consciously uses that muscle??
- kazinator 2y agoThis is not news. People know this. I can move my ears voluntarily, and when I'm trying to listen, I can feel that happening. It's probably half conscious. There is an intuitive purpose behind these muscles, which is to do the best impression of pricking up your ears that some evolutionary predecessor was able to do better.
- pazimzadeh 2y ago"Huh, we cut through that muscle every day" -ear nose and throat surgeon
- orangepenguin 2y agoI think there's a big difference between "activating" a muscle and "getting utility" out of it. Sure, maybe it activates sometimes, but what does it do? Well... nothing. It's a vestigial structure.
- hackernj 2y agoI can’t move my ears at all. My wife can do the following: raise either eyebrow; move either ear back and forth; move either ear up and down; twitch the upper left lip, or the upper right lip, or the lower left lip, …; and twitch either nostril.
- moi2388 2y agoToday I learnt some people can’t move their ears, eyebrows or nostrils.
- eleveriven 2y agoSo, I was not crazy when sometimes I'm really straining to hear something, I feel like my ears are trying to move, even if they don’t actually do much
- Mindey 2y agoThis is so applicable for "cat ears" wearables. I wonder, do these signals also encode the ear direction, like eyeball muscles get.