Science with Sound with Jad Abumrad

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What does the sound of a faulty printer have to do with crayfish survival?

Is the sound of failure also the sound of life?

In this Pop!Tech talk, Radiolab producer and host Jad Abumrad uses sound to explore the notion that life is full of noise, imperfection and disorder. At the most fundamental level, it appears that life is not based upon ordered melody, but instead is analogous to the sound of a faulty printer or a skipping CD player.

Cellular processes such as gene transcription are not perfectly ordered or as precise as we might believe them to be. In reality they are imperfect and irregular, often producing output erroneously.

In addition to this there are also organisms such as the Crayfish that actively depend upon the presence of noise in their neuronal activity. Research into how this noise is used has since led to the development of new treatments for neuropathy.