In a noisy restaurant, you can still hear your friend’s voice clearly. You talk happily without paying attention to others’ conversations. That’s because selective (选择性的) attention is helping you.
Selective attention is an amazing ability in our brain. It allows people to choose and focus on (专注于) something in the environment. At the same time, it can filter out (过滤) unnecessary information, so people can focus on one conversation in a crowded place. But how does selective attention work? Researchers from Columbia University did an experiment to study it. The result shows that the brain is selective about the sounds it hears. When a person listens to someone talking, their brain waves (波) change to pick out the features of the speaker’s voice and filter out other voices.
To further understand how selective attention works, the researchers studied two parts of the brain’s listening centre: Heschl’s gyrus (HG) and the superior temporal gyrus (STG). Information from the ears reaches HG first, passes through it and arrives at STG later. In the study, they found the following facts: in HG area, every voice is treated the same way. That is to say, HG doesn’t prefer one voice or another. But in STG area, it’s possible to choose one speaker’s voice and make it louder. The whole process (过程) only takes 150 milliseconds and it happens immediately to a listener. As a result, people can focus on one voice when there are many other conversations around.
“Today’s study is quite important. We want to better understand how the brain helps us to hear so well, as well as create technologies that help people,” said Dr. Mesgarani, the leader of the researchers. With the help of the finding, speech recognition technologies have been improved. The researchers have already developed a new kind of hearing aid that can help collect information more correctly. It could make one speaker’s voice louder over another. They also plan to study more about HG and STG activity in situations that have more speakers.
【小题1】What can selective attention help people do according to the passage?| A．Choose where to talk. | B．Hear more in a conversation |
| C．Forget unnecessary information. | D．Focus on one voice in a noisy place. |
A． | B． | C． | D． |
| A．How to improve listening | B．How the listening centre works. |
| C．How to make a better hearing aid. | D．How HG and STG protect each other. |
| A．A Great Ability in Brain | B．A New Study on Technologies |
| C．A Key to Reducing Noise | D．A Way to Make Conversation |
