People are increasingly being exposed to environmental noise from traffic, media and other sources that falls within and outside legal limits. Although such environmental noise is known to cause ...

The brain's auditory system tracks the speed and location of moving sounds in the same way the visual system tracks moving objects. The study recently published in eNeuro lays the groundwork for more ...

The human auditory pathway is a highly sophisticated biological system that includes both physical structures and brain regions specialized in the perception and processing of sounds. The sounds that ...

Barely perceptible low-frequency signals nevertheless activate measurable responses in our auditory circuits. Neurobiologists have now characterized the remarkable impact of low-frequency sounds on ...

Hearing is so effortless for most of us that it’s often difficult to comprehend how much information the brain’s auditory system needs to process and disentangle. It has to take incoming sounds and ...

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have identified four types of neurons in the peripheral auditory system, three of which are new to science. The analysis of these cells can lead to new therapies ...

A Northwestern University study suggests Mom was right when she insisted you continue music lessons even after it was clear that a professional music career was not in your future. The study is the ...

Nestled in dark burrows, with a limited sense of vision, mice brush their whiskers against their environment to navigate and to detect objects around them. This behavior, termed whisking, has been ...

University of Oregon neuroscientists report that two areas of the mouse brain combine representations of what is heard and anticipated, guiding behavior that leads mice to the best reward. Researchers ...

We invite you to imagine the tune of Happy Birthday right now! When you imagine this familiar melody, your ears aren’t involved, but some parts of the brain associated with the auditory system do ...

Last Word is New Scientist’s long-running series in which readers give scientific answers to each other’s questions, ranging from the minutiae of everyday life to absurd astronomical hypotheticals. To ...