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In this article, I aim to clarify some of the ways in which the auditory dimension of the self is constituted through the mediation of technology. I show that by excluding our immediate surroundings with mobile personalized and private auditory technologies, we are increasingly laying down a personal, inner spatial grid of acoustic memories that get integrated into our narrative identity and co-constitutes the space of familiarity and belonging that gives us a sense of who we are. To do so, I first lay out a clear ontological ground. Next, I outline how the auditory dimension of the self is constituted and subsequently mediated technologically. Finally, I bring to bear Erving Goffman’s theatrical framework of performative self-constitution as a useful framework to illustrate how, on one hand, the culturally available repertoire on which the imagination draws to constitute the self has augmented thanks to the contributions of other people in distal spatiotemporal contexts; on the other, the reconfiguration of how we listen to the world and the other people in it entails muting or blocking out of other voices. This can stunt how we conceive of ourselves, producing an epistemic bubble involving a tunnel “vision” or echo-chamber effect. In addition, due to the coupling of bodily and cognitive structures with mobile, privatized auditory technologies that thereby become transparent in experience, others, by listening in on us, acquire the ability to privilege certain types of behavior while suppressing others. Thus, there is a danger that the individual autonomous agency so important to self-constitution can be compromised.

This study aims to investigate the recent literature on auditory experiences within automotive environments and discusses potential future research directions in this area. Forty-six papers obtained through the PRISMA protocol were selected from literature published over the past 15 years. The collected literature was categorized based on engine type, and a comparative analysis of research trends in the automotive industry was conducted, explicitly focusing on internal combustion vehicles (ICVs) and electric vehicles (EVs). A network analysis was performed utilizing the keywords of the papers to identify the predominant research topics. The analysis revealed research topics actively studied in existing ICV research but not covered in EV and newly emerging research topics in the EV field. The study proposes future research topics related to auditory experience design. It aims to provide insight into the design of auditory experiences in automobiles, particularly as the automotive paradigm expands to include electric and autonomous vehicles.

How we perceive and learn about our environment is influenced by our prior experiences and existing representations of the world. Top-down cognitive processes, such as attention and expectations, can alter how we process sensory stimuli, both within a modality (e.g., effects of auditory experience on auditory perception), as well as across modalities (e.g., effects of visual feedback on sound localization). Here, we demonstrate that experience with different types of auditory input (spoken words vs. environmental sounds) modulates how humans remember concurrently-presented visual objects. Participants viewed a series of line drawings (e.g., picture of a cat) displayed in one of four quadrants while listening to a word or sound that was congruent (e.g., “cat” or ), incongruent (e.g., “motorcycle” or ), or neutral (e.g., a meaningless pseudoword or a tonal beep) relative to the picture. Following the encoding phase, participants were presented with the original drawings plus new drawings and asked to indicate whether each one was “old” or “new.” If a drawing was designated as “old,” participants then reported where it had been displayed. We find that words and sounds both elicit more accurate memory for what objects were previously seen, but only congruent environmental sounds enhance memory for where objects were positioned – this, despite the fact that the auditory stimuli were not meaningful spatial cues of the objects’ locations on the screen. Given that during real-world listening conditions, environmental sounds, but not words, reliably originate from the location of their referents, listening to sounds may attune the visual dorsal pathway to facilitate attention and memory for objects’ locations. We propose that audio-visual associations in the environment and in our previous experience jointly contribute to visual memory, strengthening visual memory through exposure to auditory input.

Songbirds learn to sing much as humans learn to speak. In zebra finches, one of the premier songbird models, males learn to sing for later courtship through a multistep learning process during the developmental period. They first listen to and memorize the song of a tutor (normally their father) during the sensory learning period. Then, in the subsequent sensory-motor learning phase (with large overlap), they match their vocalizations to the memorized tutor song via auditory feedback and develop their own unique songs, which they maintain throughout their lives. Previous studies have suggested that memories of tutor songs are shaped in the caudomedial nidopallium (NCM) of the brain, which is analogous to the mammalian higher auditory cortex. Isolation during development, which extends the sensory learning period in males, alters song preference in adult females, and NCM inactivation decreases song preference. However, the development of neurophysiological properties of neurons in this area and the effect of isolation on these neurons have not yet been explained. Here, we performed whole-cell patch-clamp recording on NCM neurons from juvenile zebra finches during the sensory learning period, 20, 40, or 60 days post-hatching (DPH) and examined their neurophysiological properties. In contrast to previous reports in adult NCM neurons, the majority of NCM neurons of juvenile zebra finches showed spontaneous firing with or without burst firing patterns, and the percentage of neurons that fired increased in the middle of the sensory learning period (40 DPH) and then decreased at the end (60 DPH) in both males and females. We further found that auditory isolation from tutor songs alters developmental changes in the proportions of firing neurons both in males and females, and also changes those of burst neurons differently between males that sing and females that do not. Taken together, these findings suggest that NCM neurons develop their neurophysiological properties depending on auditory experiences during the sensory song learning period, which underlies memory formation for song learning in males and song discrimination in females.

Sound input critically influences the development and maintenance of neuronal circuits in the mammalian brain throughout life. We investigate the structural and functional plasticity of auditory neurons in response to various auditory experiences during development, adulthood, and aging. Using electrophysiology, computer simulation, and immunohistochemistry, we study the structural plasticity of the axon initial segment (AIS) in the medial nucleus of the trapezoid body (MNTB) from the auditory brainstem of the mice (either sex), in different ages and auditory environments. The structure and spatial location of the AIS of MNTB neurons depend on their functional topographic location along the tonotopic axis, aligning high- to low-frequency sound-responding neurons (HF or LF neurons). HF neurons dramatically undergo structural remodeling of the AIS throughout life. The AIS progressively shortens during development, is stabilized in adulthood, and becomes longer in aging. Sound inputs are critically associated with setting and maintaining AIS plasticity and tonotopy at various ages. Sound stimulation increases the excitability of auditory neurons. Computer simulation shows that modification of the AIS length, location, and diameter can affect firing properties of MNTB neurons in the developing brainstem. The adaptive capability of axonal structure in response to various auditory experiences at different ages suggests that sound input is important for the development and maintenance of the structural and functional properties of the auditory brain throughout life.

In birds and higher mammals, auditory experience during development is critical to discriminate sound patterns in adulthood. However, the neural and molecular nature of this acquired ability remains elusive. In fruit flies, acoustic perception has been thought to be innate. Here we report, surprisingly, that auditory experience of a species-specific courtship song in developing Drosophila shapes adult song perception and resultant sexual behavior. Preferences in the song-response behaviors of both males and females were tuned by social acoustic exposure during development. We examined the molecular and cellular determinants of this social acoustic learning and found that GABA signaling acting on the GABAA receptor Rdl in the pC1 neurons, the integration node for courtship stimuli, regulated auditory tuning and sexual behavior. These findings demonstrate that maturation of auditory perception in flies is unexpectedly plastic and is acquired socially, providing a model to investigate how song learning regulates mating preference in insects.

The extent to which auditory experience can shape general auditory perceptual abilities is still under constant debate. Some studies show that specific auditory expertise may have a general effect on auditory perceptual abilities, while others show a more limited influence, exhibited only in a relatively narrow range associated with the area of expertise. The current study addresses this issue by examining experience-dependent enhancement in perceptual abilities in the auditory domain. Three experiments were performed. In the first experiment, 12 pop and rock musicians and 15 non-musicians were tested in frequency discrimination (DLF), intensity discrimination, spectrum discrimination (DLS), and time discrimination (DLT). Results showed significant superiority of the musician group only for the DLF and DLT tasks, illuminating enhanced perceptual skills in the key features of pop music, in which miniscule changes in amplitude and spectrum are not critical to performance. The next two experiments attempted to differentiate between generalization and specificity in the influence of auditory experience, by comparing subgroups of specialists. First, seven guitar players and eight percussionists were tested in the DLF and DLT tasks that were found superior for musicians. Results showed superior abilities on the DLF task for guitar players, though no difference between the groups in DLT, demonstrating some dependency of auditory learning on the specific area of expertise. Subsequently, a third experiment was conducted, testing a possible influence of vowel density in native language on auditory perceptual abilities. Ten native speakers of German (a language characterized by a dense vowel system of 14 vowels), and 10 native speakers of Hebrew (characterized by a sparse vowel system of five vowels), were tested in a formant discrimination task. This is the linguistic equivalent of a DLS task. Results showed that German speakers had superior formant discrimination, demonstrating highly specific effects for auditory linguistic experience as well. Overall, results suggest that auditory superiority is associated with the specific auditory exposure.

The observation of other people’s actions recruits a network of areas including the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), the inferior parietal lobule (IPL), and posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG). These regions have been shown to be activated through both visual and auditory inputs. Intriguingly, previous studies found no engagement of IFG and IPL for deaf participants during nonlinguistic action observation, leading to the proposal that auditory experience or sign language usage might shape the functionality of these areas. To understand which variables induce plastic changes in areas recruited during the processing of other people’s actions, we examined the effects of tasks (action understanding and passive viewing) and effectors (arm actions vs. leg actions), as well as sign language experience in a group of 12 congenitally deaf signers and 13 hearing participants. In Experiment 1, we found a stronger activation during an action recognition task in comparison to a low-level visual control task in IFG, IPL and pMTG in both deaf signers and hearing individuals, but no effect of auditory or sign language experience. In Experiment 2, we replicated the results of the first experiment using a passive viewing task. Together, our results provide robust evidence demonstrating that the response obtained in IFG, IPL, and pMTG during action recognition and passive viewing is not affected by auditory or sign language experience, adding further support for the supra-modal nature of these regions.

The works of the Japanese composer and sound artist Miki Yui are known to represent an extremely evocative displacement of aural perspective, as we first struggle to hear the sounds and then struggle to determine what is ‘music’ and what is incidental. Her works operate on the very threshold of audibility, and under normal listening conditions her ‘small sounds’ often appear inaudible or hard to get a hold of. The ambient noise of the surrounding environment helps to reinforce the blurring boundaries between what in fact constitutes the work and what is more commonly referred to as interference. This article will discuss how Yui’s works represent a challenge for the listener in the context of the gallery space, as well as question the artist’s claim that silence and ambient small sounds produce a more attentive and peaceful state of mind.