From ears to years

Have you ever wondered how your ears can pick up both the soft rustle of leaves and the roar of a passing train? Our sense of hearing is nothing short of amazing – it detects sounds across an enormous range of volumes with incredible precision. But here’s the twist: each individual neuron in the ear can only respond to a small part of that range, yet our ears pick up almost everything. So how does it all work?To find out, we set out to study the nerve cells that carry sound signals from the ear to the brain, the spiral ganglion neurons. They come in different types, and each seems to have a distinct role in picking up quiet or loud sounds. Using genetic tools, we silenced a gene in neurons that are thought to be specialized for detecting very loud sounds. We measured the responses of these neurons to sound and found something... unexpected. Curious? Come join me as we dive into the beautifully complex, and often surprising, world of the most finely tuned orchestra nature has ever created - the ear.

Life is full of decisions – some simple, some complex. Paying attention might seem like an ordinary process, but a closer look reveals its complexity: focusing on one stimulus means ignoring another. This trade-off is a crucial decision that individuals constantly face in life. Research shows biases toward different stimuli, including danger, affiliation, and infant faces. But what deserves the most attention? In my Pint of Science talk, I’ll explore this question by sharing insights from my research on visual attention in Barbary macaques and from ten weeks of data collection at Affenberg Salem. I’ll also give you a behind-the-scenes look at what fieldwork with primates is really like (yes, even the parts that didn’t go as planned).