On August 29, 2012, Sundeep Teki had his article published in the Journal of Neuroscience, volume 32(35).
It wasn't very spectacular in general. He had 12 aural piano technicians take a few different tests and listen to intervals and answer some questions.
But what he did next was fantastic. He asked the question, "I wonder if piano tuning changes the brain?". So, he did what any good researcher would. He somehow acquired the tens of thousands of dollars needed to do Magnetic Image Resonance tests (known as MRI tests) on each of the 12 subjects.
The results were astonishing. Each piano technician had more brain mass than normal, AND the amount of brain mass increase depended the years of aural tuning experience.
It may be a stretch to assume that the more we tune aurally, the bigger our brains get, but what we do know as experienced aural piano technicians is that when we started, it was difficult if not impossible to hear beats. We struggled, we cried, we though we were inept.
But slowly, beats began to appear to us. At first, for only a few seconds, and only when the circumstances were just right.
Then, as the beats became clearer and lasted longer, we began to be able to make better tuning decisions. We began to hear our mistakes and correct them. In essence, we came to realize that our tunings were only as good as our ear's ability to hear and fix our mistakes, which were only identifiable as errors in the beat speeds we were tuning.
This fact for us seems to corroborate Mr. Teki's conclusions.
If this is indeed a fact; that your brain will not be able to hear beats easily until you spend years trying hear the beats, and even then, will continue to improve the more you use it, what implications does that have for us?
What effect does choosing to use an ETD to hear frequencies for us and tell us where to tune instead of struggling ourselves to hear beats with only our own ears?
What choices do we have to speed up the process?
Is there any technology out there that can help us now to make those important decisions regarding beat rates, or are we doomed to slog it out in the trenches and wait for our biology to catch up with our needs?