We think that the ears muscles that humans do not use-except shaking their ears, they are actually activated when people work hard

Scientists have found that when humans listen in a challenging environment, the distant muscles-from our distant evolutionary residues become surprisingly active. According to the research published in the field of neuroscience, this discovery reveals the accidental connection between our ancient past and modern hearing behavior.

The study was led by Andreasschröer, the University of Saarland University, and focused on ear muscles. The muscles helped our ancestors move their ears to better capture sounds. Although these muscles were very active among humans about 25 million years ago, these studies showed that they still responded to challenging listening.

Schr 说er said: “These muscles, especially the muscles of the upper muscles, show more activities in the hard listening task.” “This indicates that these muscles are not only reflected, but also may be part of the effort mechanism. Especially in the challenging auditory environment. “

Researchers used muscle diagrams to measure muscle activity, and tested 20 participants in various listening scenes. Participants are trying to follow audiobooks, while competitive podcasts are played differently from the speakers in front or behind them.

The study revealed a significant response from two different ears muscles. The rear muscles of the ear react in the direction of the sound, and under the difficulty of listening, the upper ear muscles are activated stronger. This activity increased significantly when the participants reported to follow the target audio.

However, the actual impact of this muscle activation is unclear. Schr 解er explained: “The ear movements that we can record may produce the ear movement that may be so insignificant that there may be no perception benefits.” “However, the eardrum itself really helps our ability to locate sound. Therefore, our ear -type movement The system may do their best after experiencing a residue of 25 million years, but it has achieved too much. “

The research team has designed three difficulties for listening to the task. In the simplest case, the dispersion sound is more quiet, which is obviously different from the target audio. The most challenging scene is to distract loudly and more in line with the characteristics of the target sound. The level of efforts of the participants’ self -reporting and the performance in the understanding test is consistent with the activity mode of the upper muscles.

Looking forward to the future, the researchers plan to expand the investigation. Schr 说er said: “What we want to do in the future is to investigate the impact of sound transmission of muscle strain itself or ears on sound transmission.” He added that studying these influences in hearing disorders will be particularly valuable.

This discovery may lead to a new way to objectively measure hearing work, which traditionally depends on subjective self -reporting. This measurement may prove that it is very valuable for development and evaluation of hearing assistance technology.