AI Generated Image
your brain hears two voices
Boing Boing • • health
Key Points:
- A new study in PLOS Biology investigates how the brain switches attention between competing speakers, revealing that it temporarily tracks both voices simultaneously during the transition.
- Researchers used EEG to monitor brain activity in normal-hearing adults exposed to two overlapping speakers amid background noise, with attention cues every 15 to 30 seconds.
- The brain begins to lock onto the new speaker before fully releasing focus from the previous one, a process associated with a decrease in alpha brainwaves, indicating increased mental effort.
- Large language models helped demonstrate that the brain resets its conversational context each time attention shifts to a new voice, highlighting the complexity of auditory attention switching.
