ORCHESTRA conductors, like blind people, are especially good at working out
where sounds come from.
Thomas Münte and his colleagues at the University of Magdeburg in
Germany discovered this when they sat seven conductors, and the same number of
pianists and non-musical volunteers near six hissing speakers. If one of three
speakers directly in front of them made a higher-pitched hiss, everyone picked
it out fairly accurately. But if one of three speakers off to the side made the
higher hiss, only the conductors were good at identifying the target speaker
(Nature, vol 409, p 580).
Brain scans…
