In a crowded room, how do you focus on your companion's voice while ignoring the conversations going on around you? A digital model of the cochlea, the shell-shaped organ that serves as an interface between sound waves and the nervous system, suggests the ear begins filtering out background sounds before they even reach the brain.
Studying how the brain hones in on a single voice, a phenomenon known as the "cocktail party effect," can help unlock how the brain perceives sound. But it's not just about the brain. For several decades, researchers have suspected that other parts of the auditory system also play a big role.
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How the Ear Tunes-out Sounds before they Reach your Brain
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(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday September 05 2014, @03:00PM
n/c
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 4, Funny) by Alfred on Friday September 05 2014, @03:53PM
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday September 05 2014, @04:24PM
Oh! About quarter to four.
On a related note, I remember when all this was orange groves.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 5, Funny) by Thexalon on Friday September 05 2014, @03:11PM
The right name for this is not "cocktail party effect", but "spousal effect": This is how it's quite possible for one spouse to be yelling at the other and the other completely tuning it out!
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Friday September 05 2014, @03:44PM
I remembered when the spousal effect was a very interesting concept. Now that I'm married, my wife does not find it amusing and I suffer because of that.
So yes, I suffer from the spousal effect.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 3, Informative) by Alfred on Friday September 05 2014, @03:51PM
(Score: 2) by black6host on Friday September 05 2014, @07:13PM
I would suggest a third phenomena whereby nothing is heard. For example, when coding, I would get so focused that I heard nothing. All input was visual at that point. Whether it be my wife, the tv in another room or the fans in my computer I would hear none of it. I had to be in a certain mental state, one of extreme focus on the task at hand. But I would hear nothing at all as it was not needed for what I was doing. Of course my wife couldn't figure out why I couldn't hear her when she was screaming at me she didn't understand I didn't hear anything at that time.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Drake_Edgewater on Friday September 05 2014, @03:16PM
I can't.
I don't know why, but when someone is talking to me, and there's a group of people nearby talking at the same time, I can't focus anything at all.
This is extremely annoying since where I live people like to talk all at the same time. I try to focus on their lips, but is not 100% effective.
I suppose I lack filtering superpowers.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05 2014, @03:47PM
I thought it was just me!
I can usually do it, but it takes a huge amount of concentration. The trade-off is that I seem to have above average spatial awareness because I can pick up on sound from all around me.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by art guerrilla on Saturday September 06 2014, @02:48AM
damn! hate to 'me-too', but me, too...
seems like the brain tries to give *equal* weight to ALL the sounds: the rustle of my shirt collar, the dog barking 1/2 mile away, the AC cutting on, the motorcycle gunning a mile away, the breeze stirring, a person's voice, the teevee, the slight whir of the computer fan, the birds singing, etc, etc, etc...
have to concentrate to filter out, IF i can: a cocktail party cacophony is one of the worst, because i simply can't make out much of anything, for the din of everything, especially when it is voices... i guess why i don't like to 'go to sleep' by music (which is totally unnecessary, because i have a 3-step, foolproof method of getting to sleep: 1. get nekkid, 2. get in bed, 3. i don't really know what step 3 is, because i'm fucking asleep within 10-15 seconds): if it has vocals, it keeps me awake, straining to hear and make out the lyrics...
i guess my mind is wired serial, not parallel...
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Friday September 05 2014, @04:05PM
I have the same. I just hear everything. I don't know if it's related, but I can hear VERY well in other areas. I have a set of Altec Lansing speakers that I got with my first Dell PC. When the computer is off, but if there's still power to the speakers, I can hear a hum that my wife, and most other people, swear they cannot hear. They either are unable to pick it up (sensitivity) or have tuned it out and can't consciously tune it in.
Also, people tend to comment on how loudly I talk. I guess I'm constantly ramping up the volume because I think they won't hear me over other people.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by boteeka on Friday September 05 2014, @04:05PM
I have the same issue. It makes it very hard for me to work in an open plan office, or talk to anyone (even over the phone) on a bus/train or any noisy place.
For a while I was thinking that my hearing got worse over time, because I don't remember myself being like this in my childhood.
At the same time I usually tend to pick up "alarming" sounds much faster than anyone around me, which would mean that my hearing is quite good.
Which is it then? Very weird.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05 2014, @04:28PM
You aren't alone, I also lack this ability I have heard that there are people much worse than me at it as well.
(Score: 1) by bswarm on Friday September 05 2014, @05:30PM
Me too. Having severe Tinnitus doesn't help either.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Friday September 05 2014, @05:41PM
I suppose I lack filtering superpowers.
Given the variation of human capabilities, I suspect that is exactly the problem, a mere personal limitation, either in the ear or the nerves.
Given the shape of the cochlea, I suspect the "selectivity" this study found was all in the physics, as they speculated, and the efferent nerves feedback simply served to suppress all but one specific section of the cochlea, the one bearing the desired range of tones. Its nature's version of a band pass filter [wikipedia.org].
If many at your cocktail party are talking in the same tones, the range of the voices might all impinge on the same section of the cochlea, making it impossible to distinguish one from the other. If one's hearing was impaired such that one specific section of the cochlea functioned significantly better than the others, it might be possible that those signals would over ride any selectivity dampening from the efferent nerves.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by mtrycz on Friday September 05 2014, @10:57PM
If there's a good soul that can fill all of us on some useful info, he/she will be blessed with shiny hair for full six months.
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(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday September 06 2014, @12:30AM
I'm very similar in that regard. As tested my hearing is nearly perfect, and I have significantly better than average spatial relations processing, but deciphering words takes effort, especially if there's background noise. I can pick out one voice among many, but it's exhausting to the point of painful in many cases.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Marand on Saturday September 06 2014, @02:17AM
Yep, same here. Supposedly it's actually fairly common among people with good hearing, too. In my case, I've always had good hearing but been terrible at filtering out background noise or understanding people over the telephone, which meant in school I had busybody teachers that kept making me get hearing tests because they thought I was hard of hearing. I'd test great and they'd be baffled.
There's apparently an entire category of problems of the sort that get lumped into a group called "auditory processing disorders". It wasn't until years later that I learned that, and that others have similar problems, which finally gave me some ammunition against the "are you deaf, quit making me repeat myself" shit when I couldn't understand someone in a noisy room.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 06 2014, @02:52AM
I can't, either. I'm told that I have some sort of sensory dysfunction - you may want to look into that (with a doctor).
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Sunday September 07 2014, @04:56AM
My Dad and I suspect it is genetic. He and I have the exact same hearing "problems": we can hear noises others can't hear, but anything with background noise (like TV or restaurant) and our ability to understand conversation goes to hell.
On a personal note, this problem is one of the things which has made learning a foreign language extremely difficult for me. The only way to learn is to practice (practice listening and to learn new words). Unfortunately, most people want to get together at a coffee shop or restaurant where it is frequently too noisy for me to understand my native English much less the German that I'm learning. It can be very frustrating at times.
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Friday September 05 2014, @03:29PM
Has this tech got better yet?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi4ACLfaWy0 [youtube.com]
http://winnie.kuis.kyoto-u.ac.jp/HARK/ [kyoto-u.ac.jp]
As for how we do it I think it's using the same stuff that allows us to tell where sounds are coming from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_localization [wikipedia.org]
Does current sonar technology do sound localization and "environment mapping" as well or better?
(Score: 3, Informative) by present_arms on Friday September 05 2014, @06:27PM
Been doing this for years, every time my wife talks to me, I just zone out and don't hear a word she said, yet I know every word the busty blonde on TV was saying.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @04:24AM
Ahhh-s and "oh, yes"-es aren't that hard to hear.