What is data? How is it created? What does it consist of? Can it be objective? These are theoretical questions that interest Professor Miriah Meyer, who is originally from the US but now works in Sweden. But as AI development accelerates, she also wants to contribute practical knowledge that enables us, as humans, to shape a better future.

Vocalization feedback monitoring, i.e., listening to one’s vocalizations during vocal production, plays a pivotal role in vocal production control and learning in humans and other mammals. So far, the auditory system has been routinely studied using playback experiments on restrained, non-vocalizing animals. Now, writing in the journal SCIENCE CHINA Life Sciences, a team of researchers from Jinhong Luo – Central China Normal University established an ethological paradigm and recorded the single-unit activities of inferior colliculus (IC) in unrestrained, vocalizing bats that could move their head and ears freely. The data suggest the IC as a crucial auditory center for distinguishing between self-produced vocalizations and external sounds.