Do you pump up the volume whenever a song you love comes on? If so, you may not even be able to hear warnings about damage to your ears.

Scientists have recently found special neurons in the brainstem of rats which focus exclusively on new, novel sounds and help them ignore predictable and ongoing noises. These novelty detector neurons, as researchers call them, quickly stop firing if a sound or sound pattern is repeated. They will briefly resume firing if some aspect of the sound changes. The implications are, as usual, that we humans may be like rats.