Our fathers has great ability of using their hands compare to us today. They did not type as we type today. Their hand writings were more beautiful and precise than our hand writings today. We look at screens today more than listening to each other. Used to be cars only had radio and music players, today they mostly have got screens to show navigation and play DVDs, TV’s, ….
We are using our ears less and less day by day. Do you think next generations will got lower sonic ability than we’ve got?
it may not be...because our human brain has a tremendous ability to adapt...and moreover people usually remember things, places and objects as images and brain has separate areas to process sounds and pictures...
Dear Mohammad Reza Azadehfar,
Your concern over the decline of listening abilities is certainly true because,as you have very rightly observed, modern man spends a lot of time on using their sighting ability to interact with each other. The evidential basis concerning the issue comes from the laws of evolution and instances of mutations in the past. However, spontaneous interaction is still the main feature of daily communication ,and as a consequence, face to face daily interactions would certainly preserve man' ability of listening. On this basis, for the listening decline to happen many years have to pass by.
Best regards,
R. Biria
I do not think hearing will decrease, or at least significantly decrease. Hearing is still something we use everyday, perhaps differently than before. Back then before the internet and music recordings, you would never be able to hear a song unless you sang it yourself or a musician played it live. Now we can play almost any song any time. This is one way how are use of hearing has gone up.
Dear Dr Azadehfar,
Over the course of evolution, some parts of human's body, such as tail and extra ear muscles due to changes in life, like diet has alterd. According to this law of nature as the time passes human will not need to some parts of their body as they need know. In fact, next generations might to lose some parts of their body which there will no need for them.
It's an interesting subject. While attention spans appear to have reduced due to the sheer volume of information available to us today, it's surely down to the individual. Focused attention on music will form extra neural pathways in the brain dealing with perception of sound. You could regard it as a muscle -the more you exercise it, the healthier it grows. As a musician in my mid 60s, my hearing now is more acute than it has ever been. I think it needs a conscious intention by the person involved to pay attention to sound (and in my case music, obviously). While the sonic environment is getting ever more crowded, people will turn off their attention to avoid sensory overload - witness the lack of awareness in a big metropolis as opposed to someone in a rural environment. In addition, there have been several studies on the effect of silence and how some people appear to be actively terrified of that silence. As to the future, the pendulum might well swing back the other way, and the species develop more attention to listening, both within as well as without.
David is right about exercise and analogy to muscle grow, I think neurologists has a technical word for this phenomenon, "Neuroplasticity" as google says: "is the change in neural pathways and synapses that occurs due to certain factors, like behavior, environment, or neural processes. During such changes, the brain engages in synaptic pruning, deleting the neural connections that are no longer necessary or useful, and strengthening the necessary ones."
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Psychology