hearing

Across the tree of life, animals use sound and other vibrations to glean valuable sensory information about their environments even before they are born.

Recent findings buck the traditional idea that embryos are passive agents and instead suggest that by tuning into vibrations, organisms can better prepare to enter the outside world.

Watch and listen to reptiles, amphibians, insects, and birds respond to sound from inside their eggs.

Bridge spiders “outsource” their hearing by building webs that double as acoustic arrays, allowing them to perceive sounds from great distances.

The tropical net-casting spider Deinopis spinosa joins several other arachnid species that can hear sounds from afar without the help of a web, or even ears—an ability that aids its unique hunting tactics.

The Caltech scientist was revered for his work on the neurobiology of birdsong and owls’ ability to home in on their prey.

An experimental hearing aid differentiates speakers and monitors the wearer’s brain activity to amplify the one she is trying to listen to.

From disastrous scientific setbacks to the upending of scientific dogma and the end of a 40-year search for a protein

Eight environmental groups took the legal measure in an effort to protect North Atlantic right whales and other marine organisms.

After a decades-long pursuit, researchers have confirmed the identity of the pore of the mechanotransduction channel in vertebrates’ inner ear hair cells.

Researchers have been using ultrasound to control brain activity, but studies in mice and guinea pigs show it also stimulates the auditory system, presenting a confounder for direct neural stimulation.

The Atlantic has been free of intense air-gun blasts to probe for oil and gas for 30 years, and researchers fear for endangered North Atlantic right whales and other animals.

Researchers deliver small interfering RNAs loaded into nanoparticles into the ears of adult guinea pigs to regenerate hair cells damaged by noise.

Barbastelle bats trick moths with muffled echolocation calls.

Researchers reduce the severity of hereditary deafness in mice with the delivery of CRISPR-Cas9 protein-RNA complexes that inactivate a mutant gene in their inner ears. 

By investigating the science behind “seeing” with sound, researchers hope to help blind individuals independently navigate the world.

Daniel Kish, who is blind, uses vocal clicks to navigate the world by echolocation.

Using three-dimensional culture, which allows cells to grow in a ball-shape aggregate, scientists created inner ear organoids containing sensory neurons and hair cells.

Music sounds very different to cochlear implant users. Researchers are trying to improve the experience.