perception
Humans follow the pitch of a melody, zebra finches follow its color
Trained on the same five-tone sequences, people relied on pitch while finches combined pitch with formants, and musical training changed how the humans listened.
Musicians are slightly harder to fool with the ventriloquism illusion
In 70 Australian students, trained musicians let a flash of light drag their sense of where a sound came from 1.6 degrees less than…
A sharper ear for plain tones helps learners hear foreign vowels
In 140 Japanese students learning English, telling apart tones a few hertz apart predicted vowel accuracy about as well as time abroad did.
Blind listeners tell pitches apart better because their brains are quieter
A Georgia Tech study found the advantage is not in the ear but in less trial-to-trial noise in the brain, the same change musical…