Hear This

With my appointment with the audiologist just a few days off now, I'm noticing more and more coverage of hearing-related news, like a new means, grounded in neuroscience research, for digitizing sound. The breakthrough may have all kinds of ramifications for hearing aids, cell phones, audio electronics, and other technologies. This bit is especially interesting, if unprovable:

[The] results also suggested that the acoustic structure of human speech mimics the natural sounds that the mammalian hearing system evolved to recognize before language existed. This is because both speech and natural sounds yield the same optimal code. For example, consonants are like "impact sounds"--sounds that might alert an animal to an approaching danger, such as footsteps or breaking twigs. Vowel sounds, on the other hand, are reflective of animal vocalizations.