Why are objective assessments important...

[barrows]

1 hour ago, Bill Brown said:

 I can barely hear to 14 kHz now, but I would never skew the frequency response of a system to compensate (maybe until I needed hearing aids!).  Now we could certainly discuss whether there reaches a limit where their ability to appreciate subtleties are gone...

The brain is plastic, that is it can compensate to an extent for changes in hearing acuity at the ear level.  The ear/brain system is much more complex in how it works than just the signals received by the ears.  Tthe Brain is essentially the worlds most powerful super computer using feedback and a continuously adaptive DSP systems to process signals from the ear and make them discernible as having musical meaning (or not, as the case may be)

This is why if we are really to have the slightest understanding of how perception works, i believe brain imaging is going to have be part of that research.  I know little about it, but just the amount I do know about brain imaging and how it is pushing understanding forward recently is amazing.

[barrows]

1 hour ago, Bill Brown said:

I thought a lot also about @barrows plasticity. Certainly it is there, but Archimago’s comments are good. 
 

OTOH, a baby’s? Wow! Wonderful to behold. 

Barrow’s comments re. the complex mechanisms of hearing were welcome. 

 

I agree as well that our understanding of the human brain, while progressing, remains daunting. I have explained it as the “final frontier.”

Yeah agreed, although looks to me like the quantum realm, and the cosmos are pretty open ended as well!