By E. Hamerslag
Imagine you’re at a cool cocktail party, standing in the middle of a big room full of people. Chitchat, music, and drinks are already influencing your perception. While telling that story of how your kid recently rode her bicycle into the bushes for the first time, you suddenly pick up a very specific word from another conversation. Somewhere across the room – someone mentions your name. You feel a bit confused, slightly paranoid, and awkwardly end your own monologue to try to pick up more of that other conversation somewhere in the distance. But you can’t understand anything they’re saying.
The good news is: you’re not alone! I experience this all the time. It is even a common psychological phenomenon, called the cocktail party effect. The bad news is: I can’t provide you with any tips that will help you eavesdrop better. The reason is, the cocktail party effect is caused by your brain, and your brain has its own will.
The role your brain plays when you hear sounds
The cocktail party effect is a great example of how your ears and brain cooperate to help you perceive sounds. The secret to this is that your ears pick up more signals than you actually ‘hear’. While you stand in the middle of this big room full of people, your ears are constantly receiving input from sounds and conversations all around you. If you heard everything that entered your ears clearly, you would probably go mad – or at the very least, become very asocial. If you hear ten different stories at the same time, without big differences in volume, you will not be able to focus on one, or even tell your own.
This is where the brain comes in. The brain takes all the input entering your ears, and turns it into something meaningful. This means that the brain will understand what you are talking about, who you are talking to, and hone in on the voices replying to your specific story. At the same time, it will turn all other dialogue into ‘background noise’, so that you can understand exactly what your fellow conversationalists are saying about their clumsy children.
Coming back to your name, whatever it may be – the brain will also hone in on specific sounds or words that have very strong associations. These include your name, but also your children’s voices, the word “fire”, or the squeaky brakes of a car. This also means that your brain will have a harder time identifying the other words from a distant conversation, as your brain is not as well-trained in recognizing them. This makes it harder for you to ‘listen in’ on all the other things being said.
Applying this knowledge to Mimi Music
At Mimi, we try to adapt how you perceive music depending on your personal hearing profile. For this, it is extremely important to understand not only how the ear perceives sounds, but also how the brain processes them. Only by applying this knowledge, can we adapt the way we perceive sounds based on our personal hearing profile, so that we can achieve better music and sound quality for every user. So, while listening to your music or your children’s voices, don’t just thank your ears – also thank the wonderful grey matter that’s in your head – which is where the magic really happens.
