EEG shows brain can simultaneous encode two speech streams

ggiuliomagnifico about 3 hours ago 28 commentsRead Article on journals.plos.org

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dr_dshiv•about 1 hour ago

“Bilocation” was one of the legendary superpowers of Pythagoras (he was miraculously able to lecture in two cities at the same time).

Whenever I’m in multiple conversations at once in a social setting, I think of Pythagoras

subhro•about 2 hours ago

As a pilot and a radio officer, I have always been able to process and service 2 audio streams simultaneously. So not surprised with this finding.

junon•about 2 hours ago

Perhaps a dumb question but are they center panned (or mono, i.e. talking over each other) or is it split left ear/right ear when they come through the headset?

sigmoid10•about 1 hour ago

Airplane radios are generally broadcasting and receiving mono. There are modern headsets that can also play stereo, but only for onboard music or intercom purposes, if the plane supports it. But in planes with 2 radios you can usually configure their I/O individually. So you can listen (and also talk, although that makes sense less often) on two frequencies at the same time.

junon•about 1 hour ago

Yes of course, the transmitted audio would be mono. I meant one radio in one ear and another radio in the other ear, or if you mix them and they both play in both ears. But it sounds like they're mixed (talking over each other in a single audio stream).

subhro•about 1 hour ago

They are mono, but I was trying to say that with practice, you can process 2 independent audio streams simultaneously irrespective of whether they are mono or stereo. For example, I am able to keep track of 2 people talking at the same time. I obviously can't respond to both but can maintain independent contexts.

ndr•about 1 hour ago

I wonder if piano players find that easier too, compared to lay people.

TobTobXX•about 1 hour ago

That tracks. As a teacher I sometimes find myself conversing with multiple kids simultaniously as well. If it's nothing too deep that requires full focus, it works. (Though I do find it tiring and avoid it.)

lokimedes•about 1 hour ago

Many mindfulness practices seem to direct attention at two place at once, to quiet the inner voice. Perhaps this relates to more than just speech, but to attention itself. George Gurdjieff's "The Fourth Way" deals with self remembering, and his pupil, P. D. Ouspensky, has a very vivid description in [1] of how focusing on two things at once leads to a changed state of consciousness, that seems like meditation, and comes from the saturation of the two streams of attention.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_the_Miraculous

londons_explore•37 minutes ago

Listening to two talkers at a time is certainly doable...

As is talking whilst listening to another conversation - eg. Giving a lecture whilst eves dropping on the people talking at the back of the lecture theatre.

However, having a two way conversation with one person whilst listening to another is really hard.

Not sure why.

gleenn•35 minutes ago

Listening and responding are likely pretty different mental activities

t23414321•about 1 hour ago

Then it is known that if you play to someone with small delay what he says he will be lost on both - so he can't think about and listen to what he is saying if it's not one stream.

runtime_lens•about 1 hour ago

This makes me wonder how much of paying attention is really prioritization rather than filtering everything else out. We probably process far more than we're consciously aware of.

Lomlioto•about 1 hour ago

I def process more than I want.

Its def a spectrum.

In the easiest look at people like me who complain very quick if something is wrong like to warm to cold to sweaty etc. and others not even ackknowliding it at all

noelwelsh•about 1 hour ago

Absolutely. Take a look at "unconscious perception".

latentframe•about 1 hour ago

The simultaneous neural representation is very interesting result here

broccoluvr•39 minutes ago

you guys telling me you still listening to only 1 podcast at the time?

j45•about 1 hour ago

The DJ is explained.

thenthenthen•5 minutes ago

Many dj mixers offer the option to split the main mix to one ear and the cue’d track to the other, i have never been able to mix like that, only with cue on headphones and main mix out in the room/monitors. Weird

jimbob45•20 minutes ago

If you can listen to someone play the piano with two hands, it’s a short hop to get to speech.

awestroke•about 2 hours ago

This is maybe only tangentially relevant to the linked study, but I've noticed I can read aloud from a book on autopilot while thinking about other things or even thinking back on past conversations. I could not do this a few years ago, but now it happens on its own. I wonder how that relates to attention and speech streams

Perz1val•about 1 hour ago

Not reading out loud, but I've caught myself a few times on reading and not processing that, because I was thinking about something else. Like I still did the reading, but straight to /dev/null of my brain

m12k•about 2 hours ago

I experienced this too, when I started reading out loud more. At first, it was just that my eyes would scan ahead a bit from what I was saying, to help me get the right emphasis by knowing where the sentence was going. It felt like I had "handed off" saying the words out loud to a "subroutine", so my attention could be on what I was reading. Then that "readahead" extended to a whole sentence. And at that point it was like I was so far ahead of what I was saying that I had time to think about it a bit. And then at some point it was like the "reading the words" part got handed off to a "subroutine" too, so my attention could mostly stay on whatever I was thinking

baxtr•about 1 hour ago

Sometimes I read a book out loud and think about something completely different.

I wonder if reading aloud might be like walking. I can be walking and speaking to a person at the same time.

surfsvammel•about 2 hours ago

This is something that has been studied and is apparently more common when reading out loud. I have this as well. I can read to my kids and at the same time plan the upcoming day. Pretty neat!

skor•about 2 hours ago

parents tend to yell at the same time and it needs simultaneous processing

eurekin•about 2 hours ago

Also explains why we like music with two simultaneous distinct sections (bass + the rest). One without the other doesn't feel as complete

junon•about 1 hour ago

This is a completely different phenomenon. Your ear/brain are tuned to rhythmic beats in the lower frequencies (footsteps). We're better at pattern recognition with the lower frequencies.

Also, our brains will encode the differences in registers to evoke emotion differently, which is often used by horror films to make a scene scarier[0]. Evolutionarily this is probably to detect screams or babies crying, a rustling bush, etc.

Speech encoding, at least per this article, has little to do with that. We don't have music encoding so much as we have pattern recognition, instinctual emotional respond to sound, etc.

Another great video about how music is perceived in animals is [1], just while we're on the topic.

[0] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-the-hidden-sounds-...

[1] https://youtu.be/0ZYhyewNQMo?is=0mWSRAzObOD2p32E