Two scientists at the University of California, San Francisco figured out how selective hearing works. Known as the “cocktail party effect,” people are capable of focusing on just one person speaking within a room full of people speaking.
They had to identify areas in the brain that disable seizures. These are found by looking at the brains activity within a couple of weeks “with a thin sheet of up to 256 electrodes placed under the skull on the brain’s outer surface or cortex. These electrodes record activity in the temporal lobe — home to the auditory cortex.”
If you want to “experiment with the art of hearing,” go to links.sfgate.com/ZLJH.
aminoalix
This is a really interesting post, especially since I tend to zone out on certain people and listen to others! However, I found this site (http://polynate.net/books/freedom/selective-hearing.html) which talks about the fact that we hear what we want to hear, and ignore those that we don’t want to listen to. Have you ever thought about this,or do you think it is entirely the brain?