UUFO Folks,

Check out Newsweek about Heartbeat training: 
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17784587/site/newsweek/
and https://develop.temple.edu/temple_times/march07/DociPod.html
This is cool,  they have made healthy and unhealthy heart sounds 
available to doctors. 

Takes ~400 beats to recognize it as a type.  That's about 400 seconds, 
i.e. seven minutes, for a one second clip.

The heartbeats are more similar to eachother than music is of course,  
but this is what transcribing and ear training is all about.   I like 
the fact that they embedded a marketing major in the heartbeat training 
and they did as well as everyone else.  I have read of an acupuncturist 
who diagnosed a very slight heart murmur in a patient, by feeling the 
pulse in their wrists.

We don't use our sensory systems/brain to anywhere near their full 
potential typically.   I have played around with pattern recognition in 
maximal length pseudorandom noise generators, it is striking what the 
ear can do as as pattern recognition system. In this regard it is an 
asset that it has logarithmic response...

There is a similar phenomenon in the visual system.  Trained eyes see 
better, and see more, just like trained ears.  Planetary observation is 
one example, the atmosphere is thick and jiggly and only very rarely 
does it settle down and give one a clear view of a planet, -for a few 
milliseconds.  Being able to see that, and memorize it, to then draw it, 
takes practice and time spent observing. 

Smell too can be developed similarly, wine and coffee tasting etc.  
Hearing similarly for the audiophile.

Sandy



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