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squallkiercosa said:

As a biologist:
Nobody realize the capabilities of the human body and there aren't, and there won't be devices to improve what's already part of an astonishing machine. I must admit we are weak, but nothing will better than our own body. That's a joke. 
 
(Our hearing range is limited by our physiology, not our neurons.) Dear Lord, let me give you an example: our running speed is limited by physiology, and our brain is wired to understand those signals, not more.

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Babies can hear frequencies beyond 20khz. If you stimulate the nerves, the brain interprets the signals. The reason we don't hear higher frequencies is because it's being conducted through bone and interpreted by microscopic cillia that degrade as we age. There is nothing that points to us being unable to hear ultrasonic were our ears capable of transmitting it to our nerves.
 
It's incorrect to say our brains don't adapt past a certain age, they just aren't as malleable. Children can adopt to hemispherectomies better than adults for instance.
 
But for arguments sake, suppose that by automagical science, such a thing were possible. Would you go under the knife to have perfect audio for the rest of your life?

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kodhifi said:

 
Babies can hear frequencies beyond 20khz. If you stimulate the nerves, the brain interprets the signals. The reason we don't hear higher frequencies is because it's being conducted through bone and interpreted by microscopic cillia that degrade as we age. There is nothing that points to us being unable to hear ultrasonic were our ears capable of transmitting it to our nerves.

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I wouldn't immediately claim that supra-20kHz frequencies will be perceived readily by an adult with a 18kHz roll-off through neural signal induction though, as there's a chance that the neurons responsible for relaying and interpreting those signals in the brain may have already died or altered their synaptic connectivity because of their lack of use for many decades (as well as because of possibly some genetically pre-determined developmental morphology). Think dinosaur tails in chicken embryos, webbed fingers in land mammal fetuses, and how they grow up to be.
 
But effective 19-20kHz signal induction is likely possible because the assumption is that since the healthy human without any significant environmental noise could sustain sensitivity for those frequencies, that the neurons would not regress or alter.

Jerg, say it just worked, as if by magic. Would you do it?
 

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musical-kage said:

I see where you are coming from, but part of how we hear is because of how we hear stuff around us, and due to ear shape etc.
If we could tap into what made us hear through our ears, we would have to produce technology, like Binaural techniques to trick our brains into thinking they came from our ears.
But because we are all different, and each of our ears are different shapes, etc, our brains have of course learned our own specific needs. If something could, our brains would have to do some kind of re-wiring to hear as we did before.
Then, you'd also miss stuff like feeling the sound, as that would need another part of the brain I'm guessing to be implemented.

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We could easily replicate that. 
 
This is actually what I want to get my degree in, except for memory and not anything to deal with auditory bits. 
 
I was recently at the NIH and there was a discussion about how they had mapped out where auditory signals go to in the brain of a monkey that was similar to a human. They had these neural nets and everything else, but most importantly to this thread, they mapped out where all the different signal for different frequencies are sent, and what type of chemicals in the brain are released in the process of doing so. 
 
They mapped out hearing in a sense. Now that we have a basic map, we can easily fabricate signals that mimic any type of frequency, sensation, or pretty much anything you want. 

If you really want to think about it, our ears are nothing more than a morse code machine. The petris and the incus bone along with a third one that I can't remember literally make a morse code machine, but we have never really understood how the brain takes the code and translate it to sound. Well now we do, and we can take that code and now make the code ourselves with electrical impulses. 
 
I want to do the same thing except in human memory so that instead of making neural implants for better hearing, it will be neural implants so that you could retain petabytes of information. 

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kodhifi said:

Jerg, say it just worked, as if by magic. Would you do it?
 

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Lol of course not. No music is recorded to have any significant information above 20kHz. Heck, anything above 18kHz tends to just be noise and "air" in almost all music. Ditto with live music. Trust me, you're not missing much with >20kHz with regards to music (instruments, vocal), they all sound almost 1-note anyway, just a heart-tensing needle-like screech if you listen to something like a 19kHz pure sinewave tone.

We must look at the mechanisms involved in hearing, and attempt to understand them. 
 
From wikipedia:
Humans have a maximum aural range that begins as low as 12 Hz under ideal laboratory conditions,^[3] to 20 kHz^{[note 1]} in most children and some adults. The range shrinks during life, usually beginning at around age of 8 with the upper frequency limit lowering. Inaudible sound waves can be detected (felt) by humans through physical body vibration in the range of 4 to 16 Hz.
 
Babies can hear frequencies beyond 20khz: myth

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jerg said:

Lol of course not. No music is recorded to have any significant information above 20kHz. Heck, anything above 18kHz tends to just be noise and "air" in almost all music. Ditto with live music. Trust me, you're not missing much with >20kHz with regards to music (instruments, vocal), they all sound almost 1-note anyway, just a heart-tensing needle-like screech if you listen to something like a 19kHz pure sinewave tone.

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That's just one small part of it. You'd hear music with the same fidelity at 23 as at 83, your natural hearing would decline as everybodies does, but with the nerve induction you'd hear music pristinely. No more Beethoven standing sadly in front of a live concert hall unable to hear the applause of the audience and having to be turned around to see them cheering, and having tears in his eyes for not being able to hear it.
 
 
I would do it in a heart beat. The risk would be worth the reward.

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squallkiercosa said:

We must look at the mechanisms involved in hearing, and attempt to understand them. 
 
From wikipedia:
Humans have a maximum aural range that begins as low as 12 Hz under ideal laboratory conditions,^[3] to 20 kHz^{[note 1]} in most children and some adults. The range shrinks during life, usually beginning at around age of 8 with the upper frequency limit lowering. Inaudible sound waves can be detected (felt) by humans through physical body vibration in the range of 4 to 16 Hz.
 
Babies can hear frequencies beyond 20khz: myth

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Difference of opinion? 20-20khz is the generally accepted normal range but that is not some hard coded limit. Even non toddlers are responsive to audio beyond 20khz. Check this out http://recordinghacks.com/articles/the-world-beyond-20khz/

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kodhifi said:

That's just one small part of it. You'd hear music with the same fidelity at 23 as at 83, your natural hearing would decline as everybodies does, but with the nerve induction you'd hear music pristinely. No more Beethoven standing sadly in front of a live concert hall unable to hear the applause of the audience and having to be turned around to see them cheering, and having tears in his eyes for not being able to hear it.
 
 
I would do it in a heart beat. The risk would be worth the reward.

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Yeah but I thought you were asking about whether or not I would want to hear frequencies above 20kHz. I don't care for that. However to MAINTAIN my current hearing range (according to my tests, up to around 19.5kHz before a sharp roll-off) through the aging process would ofc be wonderful.

I'm 38 (old I know right?) and I can hear to 17,200 with that being barely audible yet still highly annoying, and nothing above that without being in a dead quiet environment and even then I could just be hearing lower harmonics.
 
I can hear the "mosquito" ring tone kids use to put one over on teachers, but for how much longer? I'm going to get even older....and the thought of life without music is terrifying.
 

Heck yeah... I'd go for it in a heartbeat if you could bionically mod my hearing to what it was when I was ~13.
 
I WOULDN'T however want super-sonic (or whatever) upgraded hearing like dogs and bats.  Theres probably a lot of noise pollution outside the 20-20k range that frankly would probably drive me nuts.  I can barely sit in the dentist chair when they use that ultra-sonic toothpick to clean the crud off my teeth.
 
Amplified hearing though would be a cool trick, so long as I can turn it on/off. 

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kramer5150 said:

Heck yeah... I'd go for it in a heartbeat if you could bionically mod my hearing to what it was when I was ~13.
 
I WOULDN'T however want super-sonic (or whatever) upgraded hearing like dogs and bats.  Theres probably a lot of noise pollution outside the 20-20k range that frankly would probably drive me nuts.  I can barely sit in the dentist chair when they use that ultra-sonic toothpick to clean the crud off my teeth.
 
Amplified hearing though would be a cool trick, so long as I can turn it on/off. 

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Any significant supra-20kHz hearing would probably feel like a hellish tinnitus, except sharper and more piercing than the actual regular tinnitus ringing (which tends to be more in the 16-20kHz region).

When transhumanism meets Head-Fi...
 
For me, it'll depend on how safe the procedure is, how expensive it is, whether my natural ears still function or not after the operation, and whether or not I'll drop dead and explode when someone spits the words "laputin machine" at me just because I felt like getting augmented.
 
I might actually consider it on a private listening standpoint. Heck, combine this with some sort of silent way to speak through similar implants, and you too can have those Deus Ex or Metal Gear codec-style conversations without anyone around you ever knowing or being able to eavesdrop! (Well, they might be able to eavesdrop if they can crack your wireless transmission...)

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jerg said:

Any significant supra-20kHz hearing would probably feel like a hellish tinnitus, except sharper and more piercing than the actual regular tinnitus ringing (which tends to be more in the 16-20kHz region).

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Ahh, but is high frequency sound annoying because of our nerves, or because of the physical aspects of our hearing? Maybe our cillia don't like being vibrated that quickly. Bypass the cillia and send information directly to the nerve and who knows. ^_^ I like the sparkle of 12khz+ in music but in small doses. High pitched sounds annoy the hell out of me in general. People who have their cellphone volume cranked all the way up when they talk, and you can hear everything the person on the other end is saying, cheap laptop speakers, these things make me rage. And smoke alarms actually make me weak in the knees and reaching for anything I can smash them with.

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kodhifi said:

Ahh, but is high frequency sound annoying because of our nerves, or because of the physical aspects of our hearing? Maybe our cillia don't like being vibrated that quickly. Bypass the cillia and send information directly to the nerve and who knows. ^_^ I like the sparkle of 12khz+ in music but in small doses. High pitched sounds annoy the hell out of me in general. People who have their cellphone volume cranked all the way up when they talk, and you can hear everything the person on the other end is saying, cheap laptop speakers, these things make me rage. And smoke alarms actually make me weak in the knees and reaching for anything I can smash them with.

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Ultrasound (yes I finally remember that's what it's called, >20kHz sound waves I mean) is annoying because evolutionarily it is on the border of being outside the useful range of hearing frequencies for us. And no it shouldn't be a factor of the hair cells, but rather what is hardwired into the auditory cortex.