Courtesy of Menage a Moi on Flickr
Our brains are better at hearing new and approaching sounds than detecting when a sound disappears, according to a study by researchers at the UCL Institute. The findings could explain why parents often fail to notice the sudden quiet from the playroom that usually accompanies the onset of mischief. Hearing plays an important part as an early warning system to rapidly direct our attention to new events. Indeed, we often rely on sounds to alert us to things that are happening around us before we see them; for example, somebody walking into the room while our back is turned to the door. Yet little is known about how our brains make sense of the sounds happening around us and what makes us hear certain events while completely missing others. Researchers at the UCL Ear Institute wanted to understand what makes certain sounds easily detectable while others go unnoticed. They created artificial 'soundscapes', comprising different ongoing sounds, and asked listeners to detect the onset or disappearance of different sound-objects within the melee.
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