A team of scientists has uncovered the neural processes mice use to ignore their own footsteps, a discovery that offers new insights into how we learn to speak and play music.

“The ability to ignore one’s own footsteps requires the brain to store and recall memories and to make some pretty stellar computations”, explains David Schneider, an assistant professor at New York University’s Center for Neural Science and one of the paper’s lead authors. “These are the building blocks for other, more important sound-generating behaviors, like recognizing the sounds you make when learning how to speak or to play a musical instrument”.

The research was reported in the journal Nature. (1)

Once upon a time we did listen to God.

But then we stopped doing so.

Once upon a time we did listen to others.

But then we stopped doing so.

Once upon a time we did listen to our self.

But then we stopped doing so.

We used to pay attention to everything.

But then, we started listening.

And the world became silent…