Bat Brains and iPods
Tune In or Tune Out?
Even if you are completely freaked by the mention of bats, they are some pretty cool creatures.
Recently, the Georgetown University Medical Center reported their findings in a neuroscience study of bats and their social communication.
Bats process sound through echolocation, they call out and then listen to that sound bounce off nearby objects. It’s their own biological sonar.
But remember, bats are usually not alone in doing this. They are joined with many other bats, so how do they process their sound vs. their neighbor’s?
The research has shown that their auditory processing center in their brains is larger than other centers, just like the visual processing center in humans is large. Makes sense, especially when they operate by sound.
How does it happen that bats can process incoming signals quickly enough to listen and communicate almost simultaneously?
Bat brains process not only their own feedback, but that of their social group too. The complexity of bat communication can help us learn more about how we triage the enormous amount of sensory information coming in at anytime.
Lights, sounds, conversations, interruptions, noise, chatter- they are all a part of our social environment.Especially in a gym. Talk about stimulation. How about overwhelm?
Well, turns out the easy answer to all of that is to tune out. Could be called tune in, depends on your perspective, I guess.
Let’s take the treadmill, or as others like to call it, the dreadmill. Talk about a stimulation of vibration, sounds, lights, buttons and speed. Now pair that with the sensations and adaptations that you are asking of your body.
As if that’s not enough, we plug our ears to tunes or to your own personal zombie tv screen and/or the latest People magazine.
So, we drown out our environment to zombify our senses to get through our exercises which we may loathe or obsess about. That’s curious, isn’t it?
It’s also curious on why folks decide to add more stimulation to their environment so that they can get through exercise. I think that is the key word. Getting it done vs. being in it. There is a vast difference in the two…
As a matter of fact that is a whole other topic for later.
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