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-- Hearing quality and musical taste [this be sereyus thred]
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quote:

Originally posted by Domesticated a) My ears themselves have improved. b) My brain/my interpretation of the signals my ears send has improved. c) Combination of a and b. Okay, as I can see many of you are going to deny those facts anyway, take them as a hypothetical and continue the discussion as laid out in the original post.

Ok, lets clear some things up. First of all there is no knowledge (or knowledge that i'm aware of) that the cochlea of the ear in which the sensory-receptors are situated(organ of corti)changes in more efficient ways in response to sound. The only change that occurs is a proportional loss of receptors (hair-cells) with age, the one that smellyblack talked about (by the way, is smellyblack another ElFreak alt lol?).





The synaptic plasticity-stuff occur in the place that hearing occurs, that is, the temporal lobe of the brain (the ears don't "hear" anything at all in the same way that eyes don't "see" anything at all. They just receive and amplify the signals). Now i have stated in my first post that the experience of a specific form of music enhances the auditory perception and aesthetics and i also presented some neurobehavioural evidence with monkeys which probably nobody (except for some few) red about (lol). It was a bit surprising that Domesticated responded with a "so you guys-including PETRAN- don't you support that experience enhances the auditory experience" question because the majority of what is written in my first post is ideas/thoughts/a bit of evidence towards the concept that experience actually enhances the auditory experience (yes i agree with Domesticated in that). But i blame Vincent for that misunderstanding (Vincent's music is like acoustic XTC to the brain! It also makes your brain larger! Vincent says it!).






There is another poster who sited the famous hippocampus-taxi study, a now famous study in the cognitive neuroscience literature, thank you. Yes experience, enhances the auditory experience which all happens in the auditory lobe, that is, parts of the temporal lobe. The question is. Does experience actually makes one better in distinquishing and recognising the frequencies or rather trains his/her cognition (attention) in more efficient ways of analysing or interpreting the signal? There was a recent psychological experiment on that issue, and the answer was the second one. So, my first post was a bit of wrong in stating that experience "enhances" the sensory experience (the 3rd of my points). It actually seems to direct and alocate attentional resources in more efficient ways (towards the stimulus). So SMC was actually correct in responding that i over-done it with the "sensory improvement". IMO, sensory improvement could also occur, but maybe in the early years of development when the brain still changes rapidly (truth is that synaptic plasticity stuff is a bit over-hyped and over-exaggerated. But they still occur. Despite that, evidence has it that the majority of learning occurs after changes of neuronal activations without any changes on the cells themeselves. Can you say "themselves" for "cells"? Anyway...)




So, anyway the answer is yes. Experience makes one more efficient in "understanding" and interpreting stuff. The point that i disagree with Domesticated is in equating musical experience with musical maturity. Musical experience is something more objective (becoming better in listening, analyzing, playing various forms of music) in comparison to Musical maturity (my "Taste" has "progressed") which can be subjective and relative (and related to culture, personality etc.). The two of them are not directly related.

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J The synaptic explanation makes a lot of sense to me. It's also one of the reasons why I think the idea of inherent intelligence as put forth by the IQ test is ridiculous. If I sat solving logical problems all day I'd be better at IQ tests than if I hadn't. The same goes with music. If you spend years listening closely to music you will develop the ability to hear it better.

This is just wrong. First of all you probably confuse the IQ tests available in the internet with the professional IQ tests such as the WAIS (Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale) which applied psychologists use. The WAIS is so statistically reliable, it is usually the first step in assesing and screening (the cognitive status) of patients with brain damage and dementia (performed by clinical neuropsychologists). What you also probably confuse is the difference between "fluid intelligence" and "crystallized intelligence". I'll leave wikipedia for that though





In psychology, fluid and crystallized intelligence (abbreviated gF and gC, respectively) are factors of general intelligence originally identified by Raymond Cattell.[1] Fluid intelligence is the ability to find meaning in confusion and solve new problems. It is the ability to draw inferences and understand the relationships of various concepts, independent of acquired knowledge. Crystallized intelligence is the ability to use skills, knowledge, and experience. It should not be equated with memory or knowledge, but it does rely on accessing information from long-term memory. The terms are somewhat misleading because one is not a "crystallized" form of the other. Rather, they are believed to be separate neural and mental systems.


Fluid and crystallized intelligence are correlated with each other, and most IQ tests attempt to measure both varieties. For example, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) measures fluid intelligence on the performance scale and crystallized intelligence on the verbal scale. The overall IQ score is based on a combination of these two scales



According to Cattell, "...it is apparent that one of these powers� has the 'fluid' quality of being directable to almost any problem. By contrast, the other is invested in particular areas of crystallized skills which can be upset individually without affecting the others."[3] Thus, his claim was that each type, or factor, was independent of the other, though many authors have noted an apparent interdependence of the two


Fluid intelligence, like reaction time, peaks in young adulthood and then steadily declines. This decline may be related to local atrophy of the brain in the right cerebellum.[7] Other researchers have suggested that a lack of practice, along with age-related changes in the brain may contribute to the decline.[8] Crystallized intelligence increases gradually, stays relatively stable across most of adulthood, and then begins to decline after age 65.[9]




There is also some evidence that training such as the one you said-solving IQ tests all the time- can improve both factors including the more stable "fluid" one which is supposed to remain stable after adolescence. The result can be interpreted that this training seems to actually enhance intelligence (!) at least up to a certain point. Although research has not decided yet if those changes are durable. The improvements are always not substantial.



Working memory capacity is closely related to fluid intelligence, and has been proposed to account for individual differences in gF.[10] Furthermore, recent research suggests that cognitive exercise can increase working memory and also improve gF. Preliminary experiments found that healthy young adults who practiced a demanding working memory task (dual n-back) approximately 25 minutes per day for between 8 and 19 days had statistically significant increases in their scores on a matrix test of fluid intelligence taken before and after the training than a control group who did no not do any training at all.[11] As of now, it remains to be seen whether the results extend to other kinds of fluid intelligence tests, and if so, whether, after training, fluid intelligence measures retain their correlation with educational and occupational achievement or if the value of fluid intelligence for predicting performance on other tasks changes; it is also unclear whether the training is durable of extended periods of time.[12]


According to David Geary, gF and gC can be traced to two separate brain systems. Fluid intelligence involves the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex, and other systems related to attention and short-term memory. Crystallized intelligence appears to be a function of brain regions that involve the storage and usage of long-term memories, such as the hippocampus.[13]



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_...ed_intelligence


Excellent article by Wikipedia

i prefer to use the terms 'creativity' and 'memory'. RAM and ROM if you will.

and actually i think that creativity is true intelligence (in the latin sense, intelligere, to understand), whereas memory is a conditioned response that doesn't require understanding - in fact it often prevents it.



nice post as always, PETRAN

explained it much better then this alt could have.

i would also like to add that i suffer from 50% hearing loss in my left ear. I can't hear the music better than when my tastes were "less refined" , but i have learned through concentration to listen better. This is a trained response, not a natural one.

Great response, PETRAN

Quick Q....how many of you have neuroscience backgrounds?

quote:

Originally posted by nefardec i prefer to use the terms 'creativity' and 'memory'. RAM and ROM if you will. and actually i think that creativity is true intelligence (in the latin sense, intelligere, to understand), whereas memory is a conditioned response that doesn't require understanding - in fact it often prevents it. nice post as always, PETRAN

Thank you nef


The thing you say about creativity and intelligence will lead to endless talking though lol (has anyone noticed JBJ's absence from this thread? He seems to have trully quit the internetz!)


I don't think that all memory is conditioned and does not require understanding. Some forms of memory sych as riding a bike are conditioned. This is called "procedural" or "implicit" memory. Some other forms of memory such as learning maths or literature ("semantic memory") or your memories of day-to-day experiences ("episodic memory") are considered "higher thought processes" and hence they are collectively referred to as "explicit memory".


Literature says that creativity is based on those "Explicit" forms of memory (if creativity involves motor skills such as painting-in probably involves "implicit-procedural memory" as well!). But you are right in saying (implying?) that creativity has a mysterious and enigmatic "unconscious" component which we know little about!


Graham Wallas was one of the first psychologists to produce a general model of creativity. According to Wallas, the creative process is generated in a sequence of four moments. I'll quote from wiki




(i) preparation (preparatory work on a problem that focuses the individual's mind on the problem and explores the problem's dimensions),


(ii) incubation (where the problem is internalized into the unconscious mind and nothing appears externally to be happening),


(iii) illumination or insight (where the creative idea bursts forth from its preconscious processing into conscious awareness)


(iv) verification (where the idea is consciously verified, elaborated, and then applied).





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity

(Some have also stated of a fifth one between incubation and illumination called "intimation"-or the feeling that solution is on its way, but it seems to be just an extention of incubation)


So there is a mysterious "incubation" period in which something unconscious happens and the final product just appears in the mind in an a-ha moment! (what the Gestalt psychologists called "insight").



It seems though that some empirical evidence suggests that the reason that "incubation" works is because the individual doesn't recall related concepts from memory, leaving his/her "loaded memory" free of associations and hence free of interference. This interference-free situation can result in a "purification" of the creative process in which the thing that is created is created in more efficient ways, by "blending it" with more "correct" memory traces. This explanation seems to support what you said. But we have to remember that memory is the first basic process in the creative procedure and whilst "bad memory traces" can interfere with creativity, "good memory traces" and "previous memories" give rise to it in the first place.



This view agrees with newer computational (cognitive) models of creativity such as the "Geneplore" model by Finke or newer "Conceptual Blending" models (Fauconnier and Turner). Geneplore is a computational problem which seems to change its own "computational space". According to Geneplore, creativity has two basic components. The generation of representations (through learning and memory) and their exploration (which results in "Creativity") hence "GenePlore". This seems to agree with a psychological experiment in which some group of individuals were told to paint the possible "appearance" of aliens. Some people were normally told to paint how the aliens would look like and another group was told to paint how the MOST different aliens (from humans) would look like. In the normal conditon, almost all paintings have retained things such as "bilateral symmetry"and body parts used for locomotion, whereas even in the "most different/wilder" group, some components such as the appearance of some kind of sensory receptor and some part for movement was always present. This suggests that creativity always occurs within the space of memory and experience, and that the most "creative" concepts could be the ones that deviate the most from usual memory constraints (but this again in relation to some other factors).


But this is a very long discussion since "creativity" is not purely a "cognitive" concept but also has to do with "affect" and "emotion" and "society" and "culture" and and...

i like cheesier tracks now than before probably beacuse im more lightmooded than earlier, kinda like prozac-happy only without prozac. i think level of depression/frustration or other mental states decides what u listen to alot more than the other factors mentioned.

quote:

Originally posted by habman6 Great response, PETRAN Quick Q....how many of you have neuroscience backgrounds?

I have habman6. I have a Psychology degree (BSc) and the direction was "biological psychology". As a result, i have a basic knowledge of molecular and cellular neuroscience but my experience is mostly in systems, cognitive and behavioural neuroscience. I also have an MSc in cognitive psychology-neuropsychology. I'm planning to go on a PhD degree on a related subject (clinical neuropsychology or neuroscience i haven't decided yet). But for now (1-year) i'll have to go the greek army for the obligatory national service lol

quote:

Originally posted by palm i like cheesier tracks now than before probably beacuse im more lightmooded than earlier, kinda like prozac-happy only without prozac. i think level of depression/frustration or other mental states decides what u listen to alot more than the other factors mentioned.

This is so true. I also think that the primary factor is one's emotional state.

I agree with this idea. That's why there aren't many EDM newbies listening to techno/prog.

quote:

Originally posted by PETRAN I have habman6. I have a Psychology degree (BSc) and the direction was "biological psychology". As a result, i have a basic knowledge of molecular and cellular neuroscience but my experience is mostly in systems, cognitive and behavioural neuroscience. I also have an MSc in cognitive psychology-neuropsychology. I'm planning to go on a PhD degree on a related subject (clinical neuropsychology or neuroscience i haven't decided yet). But for now (1-year) i'll have to go the greek army for the obligatory national service lol

Very nice - good for you. I'm following a somewhat similar route: biochemistry and physiology, and potential neuroscience PhD.


This thread really got me thinking about music elitism, and how some proclaim how certain genre's are better or worse. In the end it all comes down to what you personally perceive, and what is appealing to the individual. It just so happens that perception evolves (due to many factors)

go habs go.

i love this thread

quote:

Originally posted by PETRAN Ok, lets clear some things up. First of all there is no knowledge (or knowledge that i'm aware of) that the cochlea of the ear in which the sensory-receptors are situated(organ of corti)changes in more efficient ways in response to sound. The only change that occurs is a proportional loss of receptors (hair-cells) with age, the one that smellyblack talked about (by the way, is smellyblack another ElFreak alt lol?).

Just to play devil's advocate , I am in grad school for hearing science and audiology, and there's actually a whole lot of research going on right now that suggests otherwise. There is evidence that experience does sharpen the way your cochlea responds to sound. It occurs through the efferent pathway, which is a neural bundle that originates in the temporal lobe (which contains auditory cortex) and descends through the vestibular portion of the 8th cranial nerve. The efferent pathway appears to influence the way your outer hair cells respond to sound. Outer hair cells aren't the sensory cells that actually conduct sound information to your auditory nerve, but they can cause big changes in the way the cochlea physically responds to sound and therefore influence the way your inner hair cells transduce sound to nerve signals. Currently, they're thought of as "tuners."

One of my professors here is doing research on auditory evoked potentials that has demonstrated a significant effect of experience with frequency (ex: music training) on the strength of certain neural reflexes in the efferent pathway, suggesting they may influence cochlear tuning. One of my other professors is doing similar research in psychoacoustics, showing changes in sound perception when the reflex is activated.

And now my soap box! Hearing acuity declines rapidly with noise exposure. Most clubs' noise levels are above 100 dB, which have the potential to cause hearing loss within 5 minutes of exposure. Wear your ear plugs!!!

quote:

Originally posted by neatski Just to play devil's advocate , I am in grad school for hearing science and audiology, and there's actually a whole lot of research going on right now that suggests otherwise. There is evidence that experience does sharpen the way your cochlea responds to sound. It occurs through the efferent pathway, which is a neural bundle that originates in the temporal lobe (which contains auditory cortex) and descends through the vestibular portion of the 8th cranial nerve. The efferent pathway appears to influence the way your outer hair cells respond to sound. Outer hair cells aren't the sensory cells that actually conduct sound information to your auditory nerve, but they can cause big changes in the way the cochlea physically responds to sound and therefore influence the way your inner hair cells transduce sound to nerve signals. Currently, they're thought of as "tuners." One of my professors here is doing research on auditory evoked potentials that has demonstrated a significant effect of experience with frequency (ex: music training) on the strength of certain neural reflexes in the efferent pathway, suggesting they may influence cochlear tuning. One of my other professors is doing similar research in psychoacoustics, showing changes in sound perception when the reflex is activated. And now my soap box! Hearing acuity declines rapidly with noise exposure. Most clubs' noise levels are above 100 dB, which have the potential to cause hearing loss within 5 minutes of exposure. Wear your ear plugs!!!

That is some interesting research...what university?

quote:

Originally posted by neatski

hmm,

interesting regarding reflexive behavior of the ear.


either way, it's still subject to interpretation by the brain, which could either improve or reduce hearing ability depending on the person's brain

quote:

Originally posted by nefardec I don't need to do this, since I will die anyways. My training has only just begun. But do you mean to tell me that my father, who had a stroke, was any less conscious or had any less identity or soul, even with only half of his brain in working order? I don't think so. The brain is a tool for spiritual progress as well as scientific inquiry, and I would prefer to use it to its maximum potential.

Oh fuck off. I have no intention of arguing with something so obviously personal. I made it clear at the start what I think about the existence of souls, and you carry that through. Perhaps you should consider who really believes something to help them sleep at night though.

PETRAN: I was under the impression that your IQ score remains the same throughout your life. True or false?

quote:

Originally posted by neatski And now my soap box! Hearing acuity declines rapidly with noise exposure. Most clubs' noise levels are above 100 dB, which have the potential to cause hearing loss within 5 minutes of exposure. Wear your ear plugs!!!

It's not only the noise level, but also the frequency which matters. Listening mp3 too loud is a much bigger problem than visiting clubs IMO, because people start listening at a much younger age and more frequently.
France limited the mp3 player volume level by law.
I guess the decline will be much more compared to the increase in whatever why. The decline is easy to prove, but the increase more looks like searching a needle in the haystack for evidence, but that's just a feeling I got.

quote:

Originally posted by habman6 Very nice - good for you. I'm following a somewhat similar route: biochemistry and physiology, and potential neuroscience PhD. This thread really got me thinking about music elitism, and how some proclaim how certain genre's are better or worse. In the end it all comes down to what you personally perceive, and what is appealing to the individual. It just so happens that perception evolves (due to many factors)

Yeah, Neuroscience PhD is the shit! With the background that you have you can go to more molecular/cellular neuro as well, which i also find very interesting. Stuff like synaptic plasticity/brain repair/growth and long-term potentiation are very hot, but very cotnroversial and complex as well. So, its an exciting time for Neuroscience heh.













I think that taste is a bit of an ambiquous subject, thats why i try (as you say) not to consider some genres superior to some others (which is a bit hard the truth is). In a matter of fact, no matter how hard i try, i would always have an automatic negative bias towards e.g. r'n'b or Britney Spears. Its always difficult to consider what the objective criteria are(if there are any) for "quality". I always find people suggesting some genres to be superior to others mainly for subjective/relative/cultural reasons.


The problem is that it is not just a matter of perception, its a matter of perception of aesthetics. This is an extremely difficult subject IMO. I don't think that anybody has answered the question of whether aesthetics are universal or cultural/relative. And if they are both to what degree. A very difficult subject.


By the way, if you are interested in neuroscience, you should learn about some neuroscientific hypotheses/models for aesthetics (if you don't already know them). I'm aware of two interesting ones. One is proposed by Zeki and one by Ramachandran. Zeki's one is a very simplistic explanation based on the "functional organization" of the brain (check-out his book called "Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and The Brain") and Ramachandran's model is another simplistic evolutionary-behavioural one (he had an interesting article in Scientific American called "The Neurology of Aesthetics"). Both reflect this exciting new field and how little we know about aesthetics from a scientific perspective as well. Ofcourse these are mainly focused on visual aesthetics, there is also this guy- Daniel Levitin- who is both a musician and cognitive scientist/neuroscientist who has made some pioneering research on the perception of music.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Levitin


He has a milestone book in the area called "This is Your Brain on Music. The Science of a Human obsession". I haven't red it yet, but i so want to damn!

quote:

Originally posted by neatski Just to play devil's advocate , I am in grad school for hearing science and audiology, and there's actually a whole lot of research going on right now that suggests otherwise. There is evidence that experience does sharpen the way your cochlea responds to sound. It occurs through the efferent pathway, which is a neural bundle that originates in the temporal lobe (which contains auditory cortex) and descends through the vestibular portion of the 8th cranial nerve. The efferent pathway appears to influence the way your outer hair cells respond to sound. Outer hair cells aren't the sensory cells that actually conduct sound information to your auditory nerve, but they can cause big changes in the way the cochlea physically responds to sound and therefore influence the way your inner hair cells transduce sound to nerve signals. Currently, they're thought of as "tuners." One of my professors here is doing research on auditory evoked potentials that has demonstrated a significant effect of experience with frequency (ex: music training) on the strength of certain neural reflexes in the efferent pathway, suggesting they may influence cochlear tuning. One of my other professors is doing similar research in psychoacoustics, showing changes in sound perception when the reflex is activated.

This sounds (pun?) very interesting! I admit that i'm not aware of such specialised audiological research. I mean if you open a physiology or neuroscience textbook you are not going to find the information you provide heh. So you say that the brain (mind) can affect the outer hair cells in a top-down manner through this efferent pathway? Do you know maybe of the kind of perceptual changes that occur and to what degree? My impression is that such reflexes are used-as you say- to "tune" some things up (maybe some "frequencies" which experience has made them "important" to the brain) but they don't contribute substantially to the final perception or recognition. Very cool research nevetheless.

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J PETRAN: I was under the impression that your IQ score remains the same throughout your life. True or false?

True. The general consensus holds that IQ remains stable after 18-20 years of age (as reaction time and working memory capacity). it is true that the mean IQ of the latest generations has increased, a fact known as the "Lynn-Flynn" effect. Researchers have attributed this change to various factors, including the increased quality of nutrition, education and the increasing complexity of the environment. If an individual is exposed to these factors from an early age, he/she would have a higher chance to end-up with a higher IQ in comparison to the previous generation (but not necessarily so).


But unfortunately, things in science are not always black and white! So, latest research has suggested that rigorous training in some specific IQ-like working memory tasks can increase the IQ scores of adults for those specific tasks!( but only for a few weeks) The change (whilst it lasted) was actually a mean 4-point difference in comparison to an individual's previous scores, a statistically but not practically significant difference. Also, those types of tests didn't demonstrate any change on other types of IQ such as reasoning ability. So, during adulthood, whislt IQ scores can change, they don't seem to change significantly, for all types of IQ and for long-enough times no matter how extensive training is. But more research is needed.

quote:

Originally posted by PETRAN True. The general consensus holds that IQ remains stable after 18-20 years old (as reaction time and working memory capacity). it is true that the mean IQ of the latest generations has increased, a fact known as the "Lynn-Flynn" effect. Researchers have attributed this change to various factors, including the increased quality of nutrition, education and the increasing complexity of the environment. If an individual is exposed to these factors from an early age, he/she would have a higher chance to end-up with a higher IQ in comparison to the previous generation (but not necessarily so). But unfortunately, things in science are not always black and white! So, latest research has suggested that rigorous training in some specific IQ-like working memory tasks can increase the IQ scores of adults for those specific tasks!( but only for a few weeks) The change (whilst it lasted) was actually a mean 4-point difference in comparison to an individual's previous scores, a statistically but not practically significant difference. Also, those types of tests didn't demonstrate any change on other types of IQ such as reasoning ability. So, during adulthood, whislt IQ scores can change, they don't seem to change significantly, for all types of IQ and for long-enough times no matter how extensive training is. But more research is needed.

That was my point. One of the commonly held ideas of IQ test advocates is that your IQ score remains the same. I don't think that's true. I think that if I spent my entire life doing IQ tests I'd develop a higher IQ than if I never did so.

quote:

Originally posted by habman6 That is some interesting research...what university?

University of West Suburban Church of Christ Kansas City.

Haha, no, a reputable one: Purdue. We've got a kick ass department here , and we collaborate with the engineering department a lot to pull off some amaaaaaaaazing projects. I love it.

quote:

Originally posted by nefardec either way, it's still subject to interpretation by the brain, which could either improve or reduce hearing ability depending on the person's brain

I agree in general, but replace "hearing ability" with "hearing perception."

quote:

Originally posted by Trance-MB It's not only the noise level, but also the frequency which matters.

Yup, BUT even just one night of exposure to 100 dB+ noise can cause permanent damage. They have done research on iPod use and have found that max volume is also within the dangerous level range. Frequency of exposure definitely plays a role.

quote:

Originally posted by PETRAN This sounds (pun?) very interesting! I admit that i'm not aware of such specialised audiological research. I mean if you open a physiology or neuroscience textbook you are not going to find the information you provide heh. So you say that the brain (mind) can affect the outer hair cells in a top-down manner through this efferent pathway? Do you know maybe of the kind of perceptual changes that occur and to what degree? My impression is that such reflexes are used-as you say- to "tune" some things up (maybe some "frequencies" which experience has made them "important" to the brain) but they don't contribute substantially to the final perception or recognition. Very cool research nevetheless.

As they say: eyes look, brains see. Perception is all in the brain and the ears are just transducers. However, the efferent pathway is pretty much established in literature at this point (check out a recent book like Introduction to the Physiology of Hearing, 3rd ed., by Pickles). What ISN'T established is what can kick the efferent system into action (besides noise), how exactly it affects perception, and how experience affects its response. At this point, you're right- we don't have sufficient evidence to say that it substantially affects perception in a meaningful way. But I think that's where it's headed. As I said, differences in the efferent pathways in people who have music training (or speak tonal languages like Mandarin, for that matter) suggest that there is some perceptual importance to sharpened cochlear tuning (and whatever else the efferent pathway affects, which could be brainstem level processing). Otherwise, we wouldn't find those differences.

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J That was my point. One of the commonly held ideas of IQ test advocates is that your IQ score remains the same. I don't think that's true. I think that if I spent my entire life doing IQ tests I'd develop a higher IQ than if I never did so.

Yeah, in the strict sense this can happen. As i said though, even after lots of training (and no matter the degree of training after a certain point) you are probably not going to increase your IQ more than 4-5 points. In addition, if you quit the training you'll probably fall again after some time! Ofcoruse as i said before we are talking about fluid intelligence here. Crystallized one can probably change any time and probably to any degree. Crystallized intelligence is probably based on the hippocampus and other related structures of long-term memory and storage of knowledge. Those structures seem to have a high degree of plasticity.



Fluid intelligence on the contrary is based on the same control (executive) structures that govern attention, reaction time and working memory such as the dorsal prefrontal lobes. Whilst these structures show plasticity, they somehow have vary stable functions. E.g. working memory capacity of 4+-1 (working memory also known as "short-term memory" is a temporary memory store that lasts for a few seconds and it is responsible for manipulating information e.g. holding and manipulating the arithmetic results whilst you progress through a mathematical problem or remembering and "adding" the meaning of the previous written sentence with the one that you read now) doesn't change during adulthood at all and it is universal for all humans. People can enhance their working memory by employing more efficient long-term memory strategies and mnemonics, not by increasing working memory capacity in itself.



So working memory is the basis of fluid intelligence and thats why you'll not see it change a lot. The small change is probably not attributed to the fact that fluid intelligence has changed in itself. Its probably because new flexible startegies are employed, hence pushing it by a few degrees.


Ofcourse, IQ tests also have a crystallized component as well and as i said before, this can always change e.g.with education. This is why IQ tests are always referred to in relation to the person's educational level

quote:

Originally posted by neatski University of West Suburban Church of Christ Kansas City. Haha, no, a reputable one: Purdue. We've got a kick ass department here , and we collaborate with the engineering department a lot to pull off some amaaaaaaaazing projects. I love it.

Wow, do you guys study creationism there? (im just kidding lol)

quote:

As they say: eyes look, brains see. Perception is all in the brain and the ears are just transducers. However, the efferent pathway is pretty much established in literature at this point (check out a recent book like Introduction to the Physiology of Hearing, 3rd ed., by Pickles). What ISN'T established is what can kick the efferent system into action (besides noise), how exactly it affects perception, and how experience affects its response. At this point, you're right- we don't have sufficient evidence to say that it substantially affects perception in a meaningful way. But I think that's where it's headed. As I said, differences in the efferent pathways in people who have music training (or speak tonal languages like Mandarin, for that matter) suggest that there is some perceptual importance to sharpened cochlear tuning (and whatever else the efferent pathway affects, which could be brainstem level processing). Otherwise, we wouldn't find those differences.

Yeah man i believe you haha. I just asked if you know about the differences. This really looks very promising. It wouldn't be surprising if this mechanism was a physiological long-term change of the chronic effects of attentional processes or perceptual segregation. Check this abstract, it could be of some relevance.

http://journals.cambridge.org/actio...nline&aid=28755

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J Oh fuck off. I have no intention of arguing with something so obviously personal.

that would be a first for you

quote:

Originally posted by nefardec that would be a first for you

Maybe you should bust out a sob story for every occasion. I'm not debating over someone's father, especially since doing so requires massive guesswork on my part.

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J That was my point. One of the commonly held ideas of IQ test advocates is that your IQ score remains the same. I don't think that's true. I think that if I spent my entire life doing IQ tests I'd develop a higher IQ than if I never did so.

Or very extreme, someone who can't read or has difficulty with that, will have a very low score, but it doesn't tell you anything about his/her IQ. Also you always can guess some questions right. On a lucky day you could have a higher score. Doing many tests should level this, but the perfect IQ test doesn't exist, probably never will too.

quote:

Originally posted by Trance-MB Or very extreme, someone who can't read or has difficulty with that, will have a very low score, but it doesn't tell you anything about his/her IQ. Also you always can guess some questions right. On a lucky day you could have a higher score. Doing many tests should level this, but the perfect IQ test doesn't exist, probably never will too.

True!



(after all the blob of text im so glad to respond with one word! Oh wait...)

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