|
cocktail-party_wide-1fcde06aa21346d458ac240fcbdfe5039e514829-s4021.jpg
Scientists say that understanding how the cocktail party effect works could help people who have trouble deciphering sounds in a noisy environment. Guests make it look easy at a Dolce and Gabbana Lounge party in Londonin 2010.
Hints:
NPR
Jon Hamilton
Elana Zion Golumbic
Columbia University
epilepsy
Here's a question that's puzzled scientists since the 1950s: How can someone in a room filled with voices pay attention to just one voice? Well, now scientists are beginning to get answers, and that's thanks to new technologies that can measure electrical activity in many parts of the brain. NPR's Jon Hamilton explains this latest effort to understand the so-called cocktail party effect.
At a cocktail party, the brain has to make sense out of auditory chaos. And Elana Zion Golumbic, a researcher at Columbia University, says that's something people do really well.
It's also something we do all the time, not only in cocktail parties. You're on the street, you're in a restaurant, you're in your office, there're a lot of background sounds all the time, and you constantly need to filter them out and focus on the one thing that's important to you.
Golumbic says experiments show that the human brain is much better at doing this than even the most powerful computer.
But in terms of how we can actually do it, what's the brain doing to enable us to do this online filtering all the time - that has been a mystery.
So a few years ago, Golumbic and other researchers began using a new technology to monitor people's brains as they worked to separate one stream of sounds from another. The technology involves a grid of electrodes placed on the surface of the brain. Golumbic says the experiments relied on volunteers who already had these electrodes in place. They were people awaiting surgery for severe epilepsy. | 
发表于 2016-8-2 13:13:52