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20K.

0:43

you are listening to twenty thousand

0:46

hertz

0:48

when we look at colors we'll see things

0:51

a bit differently for example

0:53

remember that dress that became an internet phenomenon

0:55

back in two thousand and fifteen

0:57

it's the dress it is divided opinion on

0:59

line pitting taylor swift against

1:01

julianne moore

1:03

some people say more it was blue while

1:05

others were convinced it was gold

1:07

everyone weight and from actors to

1:09

restaurants kim kardashians tweeting

1:12

see white and gold cognac sees black

1:14

and blue and with colorblind

1:16

no matter how much people argued about it

1:19

they just couldn't agree

1:20

i know people out of say so

1:22

blue and black and know similar crazy

1:27

enough and cause when it comes to colors

1:29

it's all a matter of perception prefer

1:31

a long time scientists didn't realize

1:33

that the same is true for sounds they

1:36

thought if a bird was singing for

1:38

, piece of music was playing our

1:42

brains would process that and the same way

1:44

but then in then nineteen seventies a

1:46

researcher made researcher pretty surprising discovery

1:49

about how we all hear sounds differently

1:51

i'll let gnome hassenfeld from the podcast

1:54

unexplainable take it from here

1:59

the

2:00

the people figuring out what you're meant to do

2:02

with your life is a long winding

2:04

process for some lucky

2:06

ones a career path becomes clear

2:09

in an insta

2:10

i've always been very interested in music

2:13

i spent much time playing the

2:15

piano and composing

2:16

show on for diana deutsche that moment

2:19

happened back in the fifties but

2:21

it didn't go exactly how she imagined

2:25

my music teacher

2:28

performed at the and b

2:30

c third program in morning

2:32

he was playing piano in a trio and

2:35

i was asked to see a page

2:37

turner essentially should be turning the pages

2:39

of the sheet music so for teacher wouldn't have

2:41

to stop playing

2:42

wind up to baby see how sense

2:45

i always all a sixteen at a time

2:47

and very excited about doing this

2:49

diana had always dreamed of being a musician

2:52

so even just turning pages

2:54

on the bbc felt like a big time

2:56

what happened was i turned to sort of hey

2:59

no problem at some seconds hey

3:01

no problem when it came to the third

3:03

page unfortunately

3:06

, hand shirts and all the

3:08

pages through down onto the throw

3:11

the put lady said service was

3:13

saying the piano with one

3:15

hand picks up the pieces were the other

3:18

it went wide scale was it

3:20

was terrible experience

3:24

they and i came face to face with her dream

3:27

and she knew with complete clarity that

3:29

it wasn't for her they certainly

3:31

made me realize that

3:33

being a performing system was probably

3:35

no to good idea for me

3:40

instead of aiming for a career as a performer

3:43

diana got into researching the psychology

3:45

of music

3:46

particularly how different people perceive

3:49

sounds and she was one of the first

3:51

people to study this by generating synthesised

3:54

tones using enormous mainframe

3:56

computers one day in nineteen

3:58

seventy three she was

4:00

there are many thing with trying to sequences at

4:02

the same time

4:04

i had no idea what would happen but i thought

4:06

it would be interesting to try you

4:08

actually hear exactly what diana heard back

4:10

then but only if you're listening

4:12

on headphones so if you have you have

4:14

around now would be a good time to put a man

4:17

i started off with a high tone alternating

4:19

with the lodestone in one ear

4:22

get the same time a

4:25

low totals nation with a high tone in

4:27

their the rear

4:29

hi low on one side low high

4:31

on the other and what i

4:33

heard seemed incredible

4:39

i heard a single hi tone in

4:41

my right ear the ocean aged

4:43

with a single loco in the last

4:45

year

4:46

both ears were getting high low sequences

4:49

but she wasn't hearing them in both

4:51

ears she only heard a high tones on

4:53

the right and motown's on the last

4:57

there's this

4:58

the knee jerk reaction i

5:00

switch for headphones around and

5:04

it made no difference to what i perceive

5:06

the high tones remained am i right

5:08

here in the low turns remained in my left

5:11

ear

5:11

the you have headphones on for them around

5:14

there's probably no difference

5:19

when our insert the courage or pulled

5:22

in as many people as i could and

5:25

by the end of that afternoon i must

5:27

have tested all i i don't

5:29

remember how many but probably

5:32

dozens of people and

5:35

most of them heard exactly what i

5:37

diana

5:39

literally couldn't believe it

5:41

our beside myself it seemed

5:43

to me that's you know i'd entered

5:46

another universe or i'd gone crazy

5:48

all have some things it just

5:50

seemed that the world had just turned upside

5:53

down

5:56

you understand what

5:58

causes this effect important to remember

6:00

what sound actually is

6:02

found his rapid changes in air pressure

6:05

that happen when something is vibrating matthew

6:07

when audiologist university of

6:09

minnesota the we can think of it

6:12

the new thing where they think of a ways in

6:14

a pond none of the water

6:16

particles move very far they just sort of bob

6:18

up and down but they set a whole

6:21

wave into motion and

6:23

, like a domino effect moving through space

6:26

space pressure wave travels through the air

6:28

and then you have a whole chain of events

6:30

or set into motion in your ear your

6:33

, passes through the ear canal the eardrum

6:35

vibrates back and forth and a few little

6:38

bones amplify that vibration sending

6:40

in deeper toward the cochlea a spiral

6:42

shape organ in the inner ear as

6:45

covered with thousands of hair cells

6:47

the coakley is where the

6:49

sensory cells are that

6:51

take up the sound and turn it into something

6:53

the brain can use pressure waves become

6:56

electrical impulses which are eventually

6:58

interpreted as sound

7:01

though that sounds , a long

7:03

complicated process but it's extremely

7:06

fast i mean there's there's no since

7:08

pastor then hearing your your

7:10

can do this whole process thousands of times

7:13

per second all

7:15

of that all of waves the ear vibrations

7:18

the transformation to electrical impulses

7:21

that a simple part

7:22

the part me know the complicated

7:24

part is pretty much gonna take up the rest

7:27

of this episode because there's

7:29

a difference between the pressure waves that enter

7:31

our ears and what we actually

7:33

end up hearing

7:35

if we actually perceived every

7:38

different sound that came in we

7:40

would be utterly confused

7:42

take matthews voice for example even

7:44

of in the room that i'm in right now just

7:46

in a room and my house there are echoes

7:49

all around because anytime you have a flat

7:51

surface of a table a wall a

7:53

computer screen anything the

7:55

sound will in fact reflect off

7:57

reflect off all of these echoes bouncing around

8:00

should theoretically make sounds really

8:02

hard to locate in space and

8:04

so if we hear that and then hear another echo

8:06

coming from the wall on my right

8:08

and then i hear an echo coming off the ceiling and

8:10

then my table how

8:12

, i know which direction the sound is coming from

8:14

is coming from other other or

8:16

brain as an answer thankfully

8:19

our brain our sounds

8:22

only come from one direction and that's the only

8:24

way the world makes sense in order to function

8:26

in the function world or brain

8:28

makes a guess it makes that first

8:31

wave of sounds coming in and then every

8:34

subsequent reflection of that sound

8:37

it's like saying okay saying can suppress

8:39

you which is why a

8:41

lot of people aren't even aware that there are

8:43

echoes because our brain is so good

8:47

at suppressing them

8:49

the brain essentially edits are

8:51

auditory experience the way

8:53

i like to phrase it is that the brain is being

8:56

know just

8:57

in a direction rather than just straight

8:59

up reading the world which is exactly

9:01

what diana stumbled across that day in the seventies

9:04

when she was flipping her headphones back and forth

9:07

it just seemed the world had just turned

9:09

upside down

9:12

these days auditory illusions aren't

9:15

as unheard of as they used to be but

9:17

diana's diana's reason why there's

9:19

now a psychology professor at u c san

9:21

diego and she's been using computer

9:23

generated sounds to study the brains

9:25

editor for decades

9:29

with that first illusion she discovered diana

9:32

thinks two parts of your brain are disagreeing

9:34

a partner determine pitch and location

9:37

that's why you hear a high tone on one side and a low

9:39

tone on the other even though the really

9:42

on both sides and after finding

9:44

that first illusion diana couldn't

9:46

stop thinking about it

9:48

of course i didn't sleep much that night

9:50

this can't be the only illusion that just

9:52

started

9:53

the thing diana started wondering

9:55

whether she could design other allusions

9:57

to learn more about the brains internal machinery

10:00

the same way as you know is a piece of

10:02

equipment sister were car breaks down

10:04

you can find out a lot about the way the

10:06

car works despise fiction what

10:09

went wrong oh she started

10:11

brainstorming i was sort of

10:12

obviously i , imagining

10:16

notes jumping around in space

10:18

and buys the next

10:21

morning they have sort of crystallized

10:23

in truth would i named the

10:26

scale illusion dale

10:28

illusion

10:34

that's like before this illusion consists

10:36

of two tone sequences one

10:38

in each ear

10:39

there's

10:42

one channel alone i know

10:44

some low notes mm me as a channel

10:46

alone

10:48

the more high notes some more low notes

10:51

and then you hear them together again

11:00

if you're listening on headphones you're probably hearing

11:02

all the high notes on one side and

11:04

all the low notes on the other even know

11:06

those notes are actually jumping from left

11:08

to right that's your brain

11:11

editing the sounds it's separating

11:13

them to reflect the way the world usually

11:15

his injury

11:17

the world one would

11:19

assume that shows

11:21

that are in are higher pitched range the coming

11:23

from one source and sounds and are no up his

11:25

friends are coming from another

11:27

source

11:28

so that's what the brain assumes is happening

11:30

here the brain

11:31

reorganizes the showers

11:34

in space in accordance with this

11:36

and procreation

11:39

just like removing echoes this kind

11:42

of brain editing would normally help you

11:44

make sense of the world but

11:46

diana's illusion is explicitly designed

11:48

to fool the brain into making into making

11:51

guess

11:52

and not everyone's brain makes the same

11:54

guess left handers there's a group

11:56

are likely to be hearing something different

11:58

from rice and his

12:00

though right handers tend to

12:02

hear hide tones on the right side but

12:04

for left handers it's more complicated

12:07

bear , than other people to hear high tones

12:09

on the last or in even

12:11

weirder ways all of his

12:13

reorganization the way the brain edits

12:15

are hearing to help us navigate the real world

12:18

it's sometimes called top down processing

12:21

yeah i'm trying to say

12:24

when the brain uses

12:27

expectation experience

12:30

and also various principles of perception

12:32

organizations to influence

12:36

and watch is to seize

12:38

that of bottom up processing which

12:41

is sensing the world and then having

12:43

that travel up to the brain top

12:45

down processing means that our brain

12:47

is influencing how we hear some

12:50

extent a brain hearing what we

12:52

are expecting to hear an

12:54

offense a lot of what we perceive isn't

12:57

actually us hearing sound waves hit

12:59

our eardrums it's a prediction

13:01

of what those waves should be the

13:05

illustrate this diana uses something called

13:07

the mysterious melody this is

13:09

a well known soon but

13:11

the notes presented into some

13:13

octaves twelve non music

13:15

folks out there an octave is

13:17

basically a standard range of

13:19

musical notes this illusion

13:21

the note stay the same but which

13:24

range their plate and changes so

13:26

instead of playing doe ray me in the same

13:28

range with all the notes next to each other

13:31

you could

13:33

i don't raimi with the notes jumping

13:35

into a different range

13:38

the diana takes a well known tune

13:40

doesn't change the melody just changes

13:43

the range and

13:44

the question is can people recognize

13:46

this melody

13:54

an impact people

13:56

can't recognize the melody now

13:58

listen to a simplified version the same sequence

14:01

in this case all

14:03

the notes or in the same up their same

14:05

range

14:12

you know it it is

14:15

indeed is yankee doodle

14:17

a lot of times when people go back and listen

14:19

to the scrambled version they can hear yankee

14:21

doodle in there

14:33

when you have a frame of reference for what you're hearing

14:36

when you have an expectation it actually

14:38

changes what you're hearing the

14:41

regions like this tend to circulate around the internet

14:43

every once in awhile like this one

14:45

where depending on which word you're thinking of

14:47

you might be able to here either laurel or

14:49

yanni morals morals

14:53

remember last year when the moral versus

14:55

the anything everybody's going nuts over will

14:58

there's a kiddie version of it making the rounds

15:00

right now racism jimmy kimmel show

15:02

and he starts by pulling up a clip from sesame

15:05

street of all places yeah i

15:07

can

15:11

excellent idea and ,

15:14

attention is good tell me if you hear grover say

15:16

one of two things that sounds like an excellent

15:18

idea or that's a effing

15:20

excellent idea are you ready of

15:24

of

15:27

him or did you hear what's up feeling

15:30

at your yeah first

15:32

time first heard of the i didn't hear the i word

15:34

at all and then the next twelve times i watched

15:36

the upward was all i heard but just

15:38

in case you want one more go at it here's

15:40

grover maybe making a lot

15:43

of parents of yeah

15:45

sounds like an excellent idea

15:48

this type of misperception is true

15:50

to an extent with all our senses we've

15:52

all seen visual allusions or you might

15:54

remember the debate around address

15:57

diana eventually found that the various

15:59

ways are rain edits the world they're

16:01

not just do the hard coded differences like

16:04

whether you're right or left handed the

16:06

editing can vary from person to person

16:08

based on life experience the

16:10

british she asked listeners to determine whether

16:13

a pattern is going up we're going

16:15

down

16:15

the

16:17

people who know a bit of music theory

16:20

this interval is a try town which is

16:22

exactly half of an octave so

16:24

to get from note to notes you traveled

16:26

the same distance whether you're going up

16:28

or down you don't know that much about

16:30

music all you need to know is that

16:32

this is a particularly ambiguous

16:35

pattern diana

16:37

does something really interesting and her experiment

16:40

here she plays the melody in a

16:42

bunch of registers at the same time

16:44

so you might have an extra hard time figuring

16:46

out if it's rising or falling

16:49

and sure enough he gets use differences

16:52

from one end

16:53

your tv as a and this is

16:55

something that really

16:57

surprise people i

17:00

, no net and i understand that other

17:02

people here going up but some

17:04

people here don't down which

17:07

throwing mind boggling is that diana's found

17:09

that the difference in how to people perceived

17:11

as patterns it may come down

17:13

to where you grew up believe

17:15

it or not when diana compared to groups

17:17

people from southern england and people from california

17:21

she found that the english people tended to hear this pattern

17:23

is rising as

17:25

the californians heard that same pattern

17:28

as falling the

17:30

and of hypothesis is that based on where you grow

17:33

up you tend to hear different pitches

17:35

as low or high

17:37

has to do with a pitch rangers the space

17:39

to which you have been mostly for nice

17:41

expire

17:42

the particularly in

17:44

childhood so if you hear that first

17:46

pattern which goes from the notes d to g

17:48

summer as falling you

17:51

probably hear this second pattern which goes

17:53

be exact same distance from the notes

17:55

a to be sharp as rising

17:59

version

18:01

ultimately the mechanics of all this are still

18:03

pretty much a mystery scientists

18:06

don't really know how all this brain

18:08

editing have

18:09

i mean we know that the brain does that

18:11

but we don't really know how

18:16

the family it's almost like we're all listening

18:18

to a play performed in our heads just

18:20

for us there's a script the

18:22

entire world of pressure waves bouncing

18:25

around but how we actually hear

18:27

it all is up to the performers

18:29

if you give the same script to two different

18:31

actors they're going to perform at in

18:34

two different ways and if you give the same

18:36

sound waves to two different breeds

18:38

the way they interpret those signals might

18:40

be vastly different from one another

18:43

most of the time these performances happen

18:45

without has ever noticing a for

18:47

some people it becomes necessary

18:49

to direct the performance themselves

18:51

so how do you train your own brain to interpret

18:54

the sonic world the way you wanted to

18:57

that's coming up after the break

19:02

there

19:04

are lots of ways to approach mixing your music

19:06

and but one thing is for sure if your speakers

19:09

and headphones aren't set up properly it's

19:11

never going to sound right that's why

19:13

the sound id reference tool from sonar

19:15

works is so useful sound

19:17

id reference get your speakers and headphones

19:19

ready for mixing music the program

19:21

listens to your audio setup and then calibrate

19:24

the output the result is a flat

19:26

frequency response that means that

19:28

your mixes will sound great on phones

19:30

laptops ear buds or wherever

19:32

else they get played sound id reference

19:35

is also excellent value acoustically

19:37

treating your space can get super expensive

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and even then there might still be frequency

19:42

peaks and valleys that make accurate mixing

19:44

almost impossible but with found

19:46

id reference your speakers and headphones

19:48

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19:50

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19:52

music that sounds as good as you know it should

19:55

with sound id reference from sonar works

19:57

get started with a twenty one day free trial

20:00

at sonar works dot com that eso

20:02

in a our works dot com

20:06

congratulations to build case for

20:09

getting last episodes mystery sound right i'll

20:12

see you in

20:14

ninety the years that

20:17

was the voice of laura palmer from the season

20:19

two finale of twin peaks laura

20:21

is saying i'll see you again and twenty

20:23

five years to create the strange

20:25

sounding speech for the scenes director

20:27

david lynch had the actors memorize their

20:30

lines backwards phonetically

20:32

then they took that audio and reversed it

20:34

the result is that the dialogue as semi

20:36

understandable but it sounds really

20:39

uncanny

20:40

you want me in this guy

20:42

game i am allies

20:45

and here's this episodes mystery sound

20:47

if

20:54

you know what that sound is submit your guess

20:56

that the web address mystery dot twenty

20:58

k dot org anyone who guesses it right

21:00

will be entered to win a super soft twenty

21:03

thousand hertz t shirt we've

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already played this week's mister he sounds but

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i've got another one i want you to hear that's

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com slash to zero

22:16

until

22:19

the nineteen seventies most researchers

22:21

believed that we all experience to the

22:23

sonic world in basically the same way

22:26

of course they knew that hearing could get damaged

22:29

and stayed with age but when it came down

22:31

to at a car horn was a car horn

22:33

no matter who was hearing it but then

22:36

psychologists diana deutsche discovered that

22:38

hearing was far more subjective

22:40

than anyone had thought it turns out

22:42

our brains take the messy complicated

22:44

sounds around us and translate them

22:47

into a world we can understand incense

22:49

new to brains are exactly alike

22:52

that translation is a little different for

22:54

everyone it's a highly complex

22:56

process that we're still trying to understand

22:59

but when the world doesn't sound the way you know

23:01

it should being able to harness that magic

23:03

becomes crucial

23:07

during testing one two three testing

23:09

this is mike chorus so it's like you

23:11

take the word course savitz

23:13

he had ends makes a science writer

23:15

who was born with severe hearing loss but

23:18

he was able to use hearing aids and

23:20

starting from when he was fifteen he became obsessed

23:23

with bolero the famous piece by maurice

23:25

ravel

23:30

notice the long as

23:33

it's , a fascinating

23:35

running be under detroit all all

23:38

thrilled me thrilled he

23:40

particularly loved the way the melody would gradually

23:43

of balls over the course of the police officer

23:46

design a higher officer it's louder residents

23:49

keeper zombies a climax

23:52

serve it's a very ordered swirly

23:54

overwhelming piece of music

24:01

he would listen to bill arrow over and

24:04

over and over it was

24:06

kind of my piece of music that

24:09

, with with again and

24:11

again and again to test

24:13

out hearing aids so it's always

24:15

been in oil tories touchstone

24:17

for me

24:21

and then one day in two thousand and one

24:23

the limited hearing he still had started

24:26

disappearing i , standing

24:28

outside of rent a car car

24:30

certainly sort of my boundaries had died

24:33

for hearing a hearing suddenly

24:35

the traffic on a nearby highway started

24:38

sounding different it was just assume

24:40

that you associate with cars going by in

24:43

school but

24:46

also to turn more like

24:52

somebody had since march

24:54

a curtain onto the highway

24:57

pretty soon might found out he was quickly

24:59

losing what was left of his hearing

25:01

it was like my here he was boring

25:03

earn my head like water and

25:05

of attract john no

25:08

after about four hours after that initial

25:10

realization i was essentially

25:13

completely deaf the city

25:15

shocking experience

25:17

mike was eligible to receive a cochlear

25:19

implant it's a surgically implanted

25:22

device that can offer a form of hearing

25:24

in some desk people many

25:26

people in the deaf community prefer to communicate

25:28

using sign language or lip reading

25:31

rather than using a cochlear implants but

25:33

for some people especially people who have

25:35

lost their hearing later in life and

25:37

wanna continue using their native spoken

25:40

language cochlear implants can be

25:42

helpful tools the cochlea is

25:44

this tiny spiral shape organ

25:46

inside your head

25:47

coker implant is a string of electrodes

25:49

that's carefully inserted inside

25:52

that spiral work in this is matthew again

25:54

the audiologist who actually works with cochlear

25:56

implant users to help them understand their

25:59

experience there is this external

26:01

part that looks like a hearing aid but is not a hearing

26:03

aids it's a microphone and a computer

26:05

that analyzes the sound and sends

26:07

instructions to those electrodes

26:10

that are inside the year

26:11

the implant essentially bypasses a lot

26:14

of the year it directly activates

26:16

acomplia which then passes an electric

26:18

signal under the brain the cochlear

26:20

implants don't just reproduce normal

26:23

hearing make , that reducing

26:25

sound to digital ones and zeroes

26:27

and beaming them directly into your brain

26:29

it can sound strange it

26:32

was cities is none at all

26:34

what i expected

26:35

what makes implant was turned on the

26:37

first thing he did with listen to his own voice

26:40

and my voice sounded really really

26:42

high pitched i wasn't like area

26:45

where , hamlet years if that

26:47

kind of sounds like ghosts sex

26:50

is like listening to the midterm memes

26:52

matthew actually gave me a program

26:54

he uses as an audiologist to simulate

26:56

various types of cochlear implant sounds

26:59

so here's a general idea of what

27:01

it might have sounded like to my

27:08

it was very upsetting i

27:11

thought were returned pretty much like i hurt

27:13

my hearing aid it's just fuzzier

27:16

libya's appeared for the huge different

27:19

pitches

27:20

because it the way the implants are designed they

27:22

tend to make everything seem a bit

27:24

high pitched so when you send a signal

27:26

that any point

27:27

go here is that the brain

27:30

was tougher than as than high for sale

27:32

even if it's a lotus which is why everything

27:35

can sound all mousy producing

27:37

thing is when he insisted day or two

27:40

i started to you love france's again corridor

27:43

that was my friend adapting to

27:46

the dream say okay this is my voice

27:48

i know suppose the love grits however

27:51

brain obscuring it as it as pitched never

27:53

mind that's because i knew its notepads i'm

27:56

going to interpret it as looking

27:58

eventually makes bring in we

28:00

editing the world forum

28:03

the very quickly my friends started

28:06

figuring out okay

28:08

the world sounds really weird from

28:10

very try to decided to my

28:12

preconceptions into what the world is supposed

28:14

to sunlight

28:16

the was taking command of his own top down

28:18

processing so within hours

28:20

i start sounding like mickey mouse to herself

28:23

and then might started training i

28:26

, dumb the audio book says

28:28

the winnie the pooh books books remember

28:31

the first time and prototyping to the cassette

28:33

player played way

28:35

to poo and some be setting this

28:37

one my

28:41

can make it all wrong it was just

28:43

complete jeffers but he also had the physical

28:45

bucks so he read along with the take that

28:48

uses not matching up the weird

28:50

if britain i was getting with

28:52

the words on the t with me for

28:54

them the could you please

29:03

do we need for one

29:08

this is what it as sounds like

29:11

this is with the phonemes through

29:13

sounds like we knew that the

29:16

it is a prices are remembered

29:19

according to matthew this process of brain re

29:21

mapping is a pretty normal experience

29:23

for cochlear implant users any good

29:26

audiologist would say to someone if they're

29:28

thinking about a cochlear implant that when

29:30

you first get it in at first is activated

29:33

you probably won't understand much at all

29:36

the over the first six months maybe the first

29:38

year your brain learns to reorganize

29:41

how it associate sound

29:43

with meaning

29:44

training more accessible these days it's

29:46

certainly not as the i why is it was from

29:48

my twenty years ago but this

29:50

kind of improvement can still be hard

29:53

to believe a lot of the people that i've

29:55

worked with worked same and now when

29:57

i listen to my spouse it sounds

29:59

like her voice which

30:01

baffles all of us who work

30:03

in the field because if you look at

30:06

how that years being activated there's no

30:08

explanation i mean not to be to on

30:10

the nose but it's unexplainable right so it's

30:13

there's no way that that could simply be

30:15

true and yet a lot of people say it

30:17

reading settings on the implant does make

30:20

it work better but that doesn't account for

30:22

most of this incredible improvement

30:25

a lot of the success of the cops implants

30:27

there's really a testament to how strong

30:30

the brain is working rather

30:32

than a reflection of the high quality

30:34

of the sound input

30:37

our brains have an almost uncanny ability

30:39

to predict language and so and gaps

30:42

even when we hear something muffled are distorted

30:45

one cochlear implants worked pretty well for speech

30:48

they don't worth nearly as well for music

30:50

music is just a much more complicated

30:53

kind of sound you need to distinguish melodies

30:55

and harmonies and textures and

30:58

most fundamentally pitches and

31:00

pitches and only has a small number of

31:02

electrodes if the simplify other frequencies

31:05

and you can think of it is like pixelated

31:07

the sound making this even harder

31:10

because the cochlea is filled with fluid

31:12

it's hard to use electrical pulses to stimulate

31:14

be exact part that codes for the

31:16

right frequency instead the pulses

31:19

gonna spread out around the part

31:21

that codes for that frequency let me make

31:23

an analogy the police

31:26

you're playing a note on the piano

31:28

you can be really careful and hit the exact

31:30

he wants or you can be kind of

31:33

crude and put your hand down on the piano

31:35

like you're going to be in their right ballpark

31:37

of the know we're not going to hit the exact

31:39

know very clearly so a cochlear implant

31:42

is more like putting your whole hand down on

31:44

the know it's not a very precise

31:46

frequency or hearing

31:48

when you take all of this into account translating

31:51

music with a cochlear implants can seem

31:53

almost impossible

31:55

the current design of cochlear implants isn't

31:57

set up really for music etc

32:00

i understand the morning

32:02

my polar bears

32:14

even though my brain had learned how to edit those

32:17

high pitched tinny sounds to understand

32:19

speech music ,

32:21

wasn't the same is this is awesome

32:24

awesome oh my god he god he

32:26

was really he decrease which

32:29

even as it is twice as good as this is

32:31

stupid as yours and even

32:33

it's just three terms of this stupid be awesome

32:36

it was really bad mike upgraded

32:39

the hardware of his cochlear implant he

32:41

upgraded the software even

32:43

volunteered as he upgraded pig for some

32:45

tests and new equipment so i read

32:47

through says have bird's eye view the said a thief's

32:49

of boots

32:51

like okay with song is that

32:57

is , another job job

32:59

, anyway you can

33:05

see this was you can frustrating can experiment

33:07

because i know twinkle twinkle little star burton's

33:10

only twinkle twinkle little star to be have

33:12

the suddenly twinkle twinkle little star to anybody

33:15

else

33:22

researchers i spoke to told me that some

33:24

cochlear implant users just don't enjoy

33:26

music that much it certainly harder

33:28

to get used to the speech and because

33:31

patients are often told the focus more on improving

33:33

listening to speech music

33:35

can get less by the wayside appreciating

33:40

music through an implant can sometimes be

33:42

presented as an insurmountable obstacle

33:45

you , see this in the movie the sound of metal

33:47

were a musician gets a cochlear implant after

33:50

losing his hearing hearing then goes

33:52

to this performance listening to the song

33:54

you're hearing right now in this

33:56

seen the movie shows what other people

33:58

at other performance here and then it

34:00

gradually shifts perspective to

34:02

highlight with the main character hears through

34:04

his cochlear implants

34:11

the performances so upsetting for

34:13

the main character that he ultimately takes

34:16

his processor off he

34:18

essentially decides not to use

34:20

implant anymore

34:24

you can find a lot of simulations online like best

34:27

so as might if these kind of simulations

34:29

or even ones like the simulations i created

34:32

of a distorted voice or a distorted valero

34:34

for this episode if , seem like

34:36

accurate representations of what music

34:38

sounds like through an implant implant

34:41

free streaming careful when listening

34:43

to these simulations because we

34:48

were to simulate the telling us this

34:51

is why source

34:54

where is given to the user

34:57

that's not the same thing as

34:59

was the years or sears these

35:01

are two very different say

35:03

it wouldn't listen to these simulations

35:05

and i have listened to than it does

35:08

saddle lot like what like heard on day one

35:10

not only for years in

35:13

year twenty

35:14

or make this was a combination of training himself

35:17

with careful listening but also

35:19

tweaking the settings of the implant because

35:21

with a lot of practice and effort and time

35:24

the experience of listening to music can

35:26

improve yeah i will listen to music

35:29

over and over again

35:31

no trace weekend different settings

35:33

and i will certainly what he always the snow say

35:36

these , assemblies fuzzy to meet

35:40

meet so seabirds feats how

35:42

much electricity went to different lectures

35:45

and so this was an iterative process that

35:47

went on and is still going on

35:52

after years of upgrades tweaks

35:55

training might , some

35:57

real improvement but not

35:59

for all

36:00

music most the piece of

36:02

music that i enjoyed his we're

36:04

gonna hurt the series no

36:06

your to me

36:07

mike guys listen to some new music

36:10

but for unfamiliar music it's

36:12

a pattern that matthew notices with his

36:14

patients to

36:15

and i think it's a testament to the brain filling in

36:17

those gaps conjuring the memory

36:20

of what the sound quality should be

36:22

the implant sort of gives you just enough

36:25

that the brain can put together the whole puzzle

36:28

and of course make is listening

36:30

to valero again

36:32

curse not really enjoy it but there are

36:35

things i know in a missing

36:37

the news and i'm still not getting some

36:39

that sensitive ,

36:42

uribe with music is

36:44

reaching for the crescendo

36:47

in each of it's interests i

36:50

knew and missing

36:51

in a sense valero is so familiar

36:54

it's almost like language from mike blair

36:56

oh says really good to refuse i know exactly

36:59

where his first some like

37:00

this new bolero is certainly different

37:03

from the version he remembers but

37:05

mike lot of the new version even

37:07

sound good for it and getting of

37:09

valero is incomplete next

37:12

year tennessee the fleet's

37:14

it is still a source of pleasure

37:18

ultimately

37:20

we don't really know exactly

37:22

how our brain is able to do this it

37:25

, almost feel like magic so

37:27

it filters and echo is how it shifts

37:29

hi tones to one ear and moton to

37:32

be other out can take can teeny

37:34

noisy input and rebuild

37:36

and new version of valera

37:38

we do with very complex calculations

37:41

that i don't think fast we

37:44

really know

37:45

that they have some psychologists

37:48

diana do it again

37:49

there are no from us of things about our hearings

37:51

that we don't understand and

37:55

what we hear is also quite just

37:58

what intensified is painful

38:01

but we do know that the brain is constantly editing

38:03

shaping and building the world that

38:05

we hear our ,

38:07

or life experience or familiarity

38:10

with a piece of music music all states

38:12

are we are and what here

38:14

hear which raises a pretty fundamental

38:17

question ronald opus for for

38:19

for a symphony what is

38:21

the real nice it is is in

38:23

the mind the composer

38:25

it in the mind of the conductor who has

38:27

worked long hours straight feel castro

38:29

performance

38:30

is it in the mind of someone in the audiences

38:32

never heard it before and doesn't know what

38:34

to expect

38:35

and they are so surely that there's no

38:38

one real version is the music

38:40

that many and each one is

38:42

safe by the knowledge and expectation

38:44

that listeners brings your their experiences

38:48

the idea that to a very real extend

38:50

our brains conjure different individual

38:52

realities inside our heads on

38:55

, one hand hand a clear reminder

38:57

to be to and not just for hearing

38:59

no matter how certain we are what we perceive

39:02

isn't we reality so

39:05

it's a question of ourselves at our of

39:07

stubborn moments at

39:09

, same time moments how cool

39:11

our brains i know there is

39:13

perfect reminder brains our own subjectivity

39:16

in humility but i also

39:18

just can't get over the fact that our blame

39:20

puts on this fireworks show every

39:23

day and that a lot of people

39:25

using a cochlear implants can

39:27

pop into this almost magic ability

39:29

to translate a few electrodes

39:31

into this new emotionally

39:34

satisfying experience without

39:36

scientists really knowing how the whole thing

40:00

an unexplainable a science podcast

40:02

remarks about everything we don't know

40:04

this episode in particular was part of their new

40:06

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40:09

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40:11

right i said six every episode

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is intriguing enlightening and super

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40:23

twenty thousand and hurts is pretty set of the sound design

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40:32

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40:36

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is our audio fellow mending when is

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keeping things sunny and bird

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pinkerton is dreaming of bio the minister

41:01

we'll in the show on one final auditory

41:03

illusion our brains are really

41:05

good at recognizing patterns which

41:07

can make us here things even when they're not

41:10

really there for instance if you take

41:12

a well known song and converted into nothing

41:14

but piano notes people will start to

41:16

think they are hearing vocals that's

41:18

because your brain cells in the words and expects

41:21

to here to show you what i mean here's

41:23

a clip of we will rock you by queen

41:38

now we can take that audio and convert

41:40

it into notes on a virtual piano

41:42

but after we do there's a good chance

41:45

you'll still perceives um dos lead vocals

41:47

mixed in

42:02

finish

42:04

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