Biotech

There is a common thing after we had a cocktail party; so-called ‘cocktail party effect’. That is how our brains develop the ability to pinpoint and focus on particular sounds among a background of noise.

Researchers led by Professor Andrew King, a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, have developed a method that enables the changes in the selectivity of the nerve cells for different directions of space to be to separated out from the development of the auditory map. The technique, used on ferrets, involves using ‘virtual ears’. This ‘virtual ears’ would enable you to distinguish particular sounds among a background of noise.

The condition of the peoples who suffering ‘cocktail party effect’ have a similiarity with children’s hearing abilities. Humans begin to develop their hearing at a very early stage. Even a 28 week old foetus will respond to sound, and newborn infants can distinguish different types of speech sound. Our hearing continues to develop throughout childhood, including the ability to distinguish between sounds coming from different directions and to understand speech in difficult acoustic environments, such as a busy room with many echoes.

Nerve cells in the superior colliculus, one of the brain regions responsible for processing sound, mature during infancy, gradually developing a preference for specific sound directions. Which of these nerve cells are active therefore signals where sounds are located, forming an auditory map of the environment.

The researchers in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics placed tiny microphones inside the opening of the ears of adult ferrets to capture the sound as modulated by an adult head. This sound, when played back over headphones to an infant ferret, appears to be coming from outside the ferret’s head, but mimics what an adult would hear.

So, if one of your bestfriend were need your ear for telling their all feelings about the-cruel-of-life, after you came from a cocktail party,… i bet you’ll need this virtual ear!*giggling.

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