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A new study found that the human ear muscles that scientists have long believed are actually activated when we try to listen hard.
Although the ear muscles changed the shape of the ear crust, scientists believe that our ancestors have stopped using them millions of years ago.
As human growth is more efficient with visual and sound systems, evolutionary pressure stops to move their ears. This caused the elderly muscles to become archaeological, as scientists believe.
But now the researchers have found that these muscles serve a function: they are activated when we try to listen to competing sounds.
“There are three large muscles linking the call to prayer with the skull and scalp, which is important to eagerness,” said the first author Andreas Shrair of the University of Sarland in Germany.
“These muscles, especially the superior ear muscles, show an increased activity during the effort to listen.”
The study, published in the magazine BoundariesI found that these muscles work not only as a reaction but it is possible as part of the voltage mechanism when we try to pay attention.
This is especially in “difficult auditory environments”.
To test muscle performance, the researchers recruited 20 people without hearing problems. Use Electromyograph, which measures electrical activity in the muscles, to help identify activity in the eighth muscles of the participants while listening closely.
They applied the electrodes to the earlier muscles of the participants and played an audible book with podcast that dispersed in front of them or behind them.
Participants underwent 12 experiments for five minutes each, covering three levels of difficulty.
In easy mode, podcast was quieter than Audiobook. In other experiences, it looked like an audible book and made deviations with a louder voice.
After that, the researchers interrogated the participants about the content of the auditory kitchen, and asked them to evaluate their efforts and estimate the number of times they lost the auditory kitchen thread in each experiment. They found two muscles of the ear in a different way with different cases.
“The rear ears muscles interacted with the changes in the direction while the reaction of the superior ear muscles was at the level of the task difficulty,” I noticed the study.
The super eults were activated in the average situation more than the easy situation and were “very active” through the difficult situation.
This indicates that these ear muscles may provide an objective measure of the listening effort.
However, it is not clear whether muscle activity is directly related to the effectiveness of hearing.
“The ear movements that can be generated through the signals that we have recorded are so slim that there is no benefit that can be perceived,” said Dr. Sharsror, adding that the ear itself contributes to our ability to localize the voices. “Therefore, our Oleeric system may try to be the best of what after it has become archaeological for 25 million years, but it does not achieve much.”
Scientists said that more work is needed to confirm these results and develop practical applications.