If you’ve ever been in an argument over what you thought you heard someone else say, the results of a recent study should come as no surprise.

They suggest that when you hear something, it may not sound the same to me.

From Scientific American Mind & Brain:

…Scientists at the University of Oxford are trying to understand how the ears and the brain work together. They fit ferrets with auditory implants, trained them to respond to sound, and then looked at the way their neurons reacted. It turns out that each ferret’s neurons in the auditory cortex responded to changes in gradual differences in sound ­ but each ferret responded differently.

The researchers say this is applicable to humans. They say this means that our brains are wired to process sounds depending on how our ears deliver that sound. So if you suddenly heard the world through my ears, it might sound quite different.

This explains a lot…

Lord of the Rings fans, rejoice.

Kevin Thompson at Cyberlaw Central, and three-time host of Blawg Review, the weekly review of the best in legal blogging, sets Blawg Review #144 in Middle Earth.

Mediators may also enjoy reading “Gollum, Meet Sméagol: A Schizophrenic Rumination on Mediator Values Beyond Self-Determination and Neutrality“, by Professor James Coben, Director of the Dispute Resolution Institute at Hamline University School of Law, an article that challenges mediation’s long-cherished notions of self-determination and neutrality and invites practitioners to consider the importance of other values in mediation: justice and community, and the connection and interplay between the two.

The quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail. But hope remains, if friends stay true.

Don’t miss Blawg Review #144.