Mastodawn

Altered states of consciousness induced by breathwork accompanied by music
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0329411
#ycombinator #Magnetic_resonance_imaging #Music_therapy #Mental_health_therapies #Emotions #Bioacoustics #Hippocampus #Memory #Respiratory_physiology

Neurobiological substrates of altered states of consciousness induced by high ventilation breathwork accompanied by music

The popularity of breathwork as a therapeutic tool for psychological distress is rapidly expanding. Breathwork practices that increase ventilatory rate or depth, facilitated by music, can evoke subjective experiential states analogous to altered states of consciousness (ASCs) evoked by psychedelic substances. These states include components such as euphoria, bliss, and perceptual differences. However, the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the profound subjective effects of high ventilation breathwork (HVB) remain largely unknown and unexplored. In this study, we investigated the neurobiological substrates of ASCs induced by HVB in experienced practitioners. We demonstrate that the intensity of ASCs evoked by HVB was proportional to cardiovascular sympathetic activation and to haemodynamic alterations in cerebral perfusion within clusters spanning the left operculum/posterior insula and right amygdala/anterior hippocampus; regions implicated in respiratory interoceptive representation and the processing of emotional memories, respectively. These observed regional cerebral effects may underlie pivotal mental experiences that mediate positive therapeutic outcomes of HVB.

Dan Stowell 1d ago

"Foundation Models for Bioacoustics -- a Comparative Review" https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.01277 - a very good review/benchmarking paper on the latest deep learning models for bioacoustics. Recommended. Covers many of the important aspects of models. #bioacoustics #deeplearning

Foundation Models for Bioacoustics -- a Comparative Review

Automated bioacoustic analysis is essential for biodiversity monitoring and conservation, requiring advanced deep learning models that can adapt to diverse bioacoustic tasks. This article presents a comprehensive review of large-scale pretrained bioacoustic foundation models and systematically investigates their transferability across multiple bioacoustic classification tasks. We overview bioacoustic representation learning including major pretraining data sources and benchmarks. On this basis, we review bioacoustic foundation models by thoroughly analysing design decisions such as model architecture, pretraining scheme, and training paradigm. Additionally, we evaluate selected foundation models on classification tasks from the BEANS and BirdSet benchmarks, comparing the generalisability of learned representations under both linear and attentive probing strategies. Our comprehensive experimental analysis reveals that BirdMAE, trained on large-scale bird song data with a self-supervised objective, achieves the best performance on the BirdSet benchmark. On BEANS, BEATs$_{NLM}$, the extracted encoder of the NatureLM-audio large audio model, is slightly better. Both transformer-based models require attentive probing to extract the full performance of their representations. ConvNext$_{BS}$ and Perch models trained with supervision on large-scale bird song data remain competitive for passive acoustic monitoring classification tasks of BirdSet in linear probing settings. Training a new linear classifier has clear advantages over evaluating these models without further training. While on BEANS, the baseline model BEATs trained with self-supervision on AudioSet outperforms bird-specific models when evaluated with attentive probing. These findings provide valuable guidance for practitioners selecting appropriate models to adapt them to new bioacoustic classification tasks via probing.

arXiv.org

Dan Stowell Aug 19

I'm very proud of Ines Nolasco - she passed her PhD defence with flying colours! (aka "minor corrections")

It's been great working with her on animal sounds, individuality, and machine learning. ......... She's now available for postdoc jobs etc. Highly recommended! #bioacoustics

Nicole Hennig Aug 17

How AI is helping advance the science of bioacoustics to save endangered species https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/how-ai-is-helping-advance-the-science-of-bioacoustics-to-save-endangered-species/ #AI #bioacoustics

Nicole Hennig Aug 17

Vanessa Rojas Aug 9

#introduction
(A new account for teaching/research stuff).
I teach wildlife and GIS courses at a field campus (State University of New York - College of Environmental Science and Forestry) in the Adirondack Park.
Most of my research focuses on bat conservation, bioacoustics, occupancy modeling, spatial analyses...but also involved in collaborative projects with trail cameras, bird research, etc.
Love to connect with other BIPOC in science.
#bats #wildlife #BIPOC #BioAcoustics #GIS

PPC Land Aug 7

Google releases updated Perch AI model for bioacoustic conservation: Google releases improved Perch AI to help scientists protect endangered species through advanced audio analysis technology. https://ppc.land/google-releases-updated-perch-ai-model-for-bioacoustic-conservation/ #Google #PerchAI #Bioacoustics #Conservation #EndangeredSpecies

Google releases updated Perch AI model for bioacoustic conservation

Google releases improved Perch AI to help scientists protect endangered species through advanced audio analysis technology.

PPC Land

rijo Aug 7

Google releases updated Perch AI model for bioacoustic conservation https://ppc.land/google-releases-updated-perch-ai-model-for-bioacoustic-conservation/ #Google #PerchAI #Bioacoustics #Conservation #EndangeredSpecies

Paul Aug 5

I'm really interested to follow the bioacoustics work we're doing on some of our projects, here's an example on our Wilder Mira project in Portugal #Nature #Science #Rewilding #Ecology #Ecosystems #Bioacoustics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXr6m26cAtE

How we use technology to monitor ecosystem health | VLOG

YouTube

Dan Stowell Jul 24

An important issue recently noticed: bats versus electric vehicles? "Sounds of silence: electric mobility promises a quieter soundscape for wildlife, but may challenge ultrasonically sensitive species globally" https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.07.10.664227 #bats #bioacoustics #animalbehaviour #EVs #electricvehicles