{"id":295763,"date":"2025-05-02T10:31:15","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T10:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/02\/wiggling-ears-may-have-once-helped-boost-human-hearing\/"},"modified":"2025-05-02T10:31:15","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T10:31:15","slug":"wiggling-ears-may-have-once-helped-boost-human-hearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/02\/wiggling-ears-may-have-once-helped-boost-human-hearing\/","title":{"rendered":"Wiggling ears may have once helped boost human hearing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i3.wp.com\/www.snexplores.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/020625_LS_ear-wiggle_feat-800x450.jpg?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Wiggling ears may have once helped boost human hearing\" title=\"Wiggling ears may have once helped boost human hearing\" \/><\/div>\n<p>You\u2019ve probably seen a cat or dog swing their ears toward a sound. We can\u2019t move our fairly rigid ears this dramatically. But people still possess ancient ear-moving muscles. Some of us can even wiggle our ears on demand. And, it now turns out, they\u2019re more active than anyone knew.<\/p>\n<p>Andreas Schr\u00f6er is an ear-muscle expert. An ear wiggler himself, he\u2019s also a neuroscientist at Saarland University. That\u2019s in Saarbr\u00fccken, Germany. Schr\u00f6er was part of a team that asked 20 people with normal hearing to listen to a recorded voice. Meanwhile, distracting podcasts played in the background. Electrodes around the volunteers\u2019 ears recorded their muscle activity.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"wp-block-sciencenews-inline-related-post alignleft\">\n<h4><a href=\"https:\/\/www.snexplores.org\/article\/explainer-how-ears-work\">Explainer: How the ears work<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/aside>\n<p>One particular muscle fired up when <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/blog\/scicurious\/how-brains-filter-signal-noise\" rel=\"noopener\">listening conditions were difficult<\/a>. It\u2019s known as the superior auricular (Aur-IK-yu-leur) muscle. It sits just above the ear and lifts it up.<\/p>\n<p>Schr\u00f6er\u2019s group shared this finding January 30 in <em>Frontiers in Neuroscience<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Millions of years ago, this muscle may have helped our ancestors home in on sounds. But modern humans don\u2019t wiggle their ears all that much. Today, it\u2019s doubtful that this tiny wisp of muscle action helps us hear better (though scientists haven\u2019t tested that). \u201cIt does its best, but it probably doesn&#8217;t work,\u201d Schr\u00f6er says.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Still these muscles might have another use. Their activity could provide a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/journals\/neuroscience\/articles\/10.3389\/fnins.2024.1462507\/full\" rel=\"noopener\">measure of someone\u2019s effort to hear<\/a>. That knowledge might one day be used to help improve hearing-aid technology. For instance, it might tell the device to dampen background noise when someone is struggling to hear.<\/p>\n<p>Schr\u00f6er says humans\u2019 wide variety of ears \u2014 and wiggling abilities \u2014 poses a challenge for research on ear muscles. And ear muscles\u2019 wide range of sizes, he adds, can make it hard to accurately record their activity.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Schr\u00f6er has collected stories of remarkable ear abilities. These include people who feel their ears moving toward a sound. Others use their ear movements in daily life. \u201cThey just wiggle their ears a little bit, and then their glasses are back on their nose where they belong,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>Ear-wiggling research is comforting to some people with exceptional ear control, Schr\u00f6er says. \u201cThey really appreciate it because they always thought they were kind of strange.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.snexplores.org\/article\/wiggling-ear-muscles-help-hearing\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You\u2019ve probably seen a cat or dog swing their ears toward a sound. We can\u2019t move our fairly rigid ears this dramatically. But people still possess ancient ear-moving muscles. Some of us can even wiggle our ears on demand. And, it now turns out, they\u2019re more active than anyone knew. Andreas Schr\u00f6er is an ear-muscle [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.snexplores.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/020625_LS_ear-wiggle_feat-800x450.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[1919,10524,1288,3227,4261,184601],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295763"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295763"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295765,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295763\/revisions\/295765"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}