Selective hearing is an involuntary tendency to focus on an individual speaker in any environment. Humans who have selective hearing are able to ignore all that is occurring around them. What makes people with selective hearing different from people who just decide to tune out the rest of their environment is that people with selective hearing do not realize or choose when to tune out the environment. The article, “How Selective Hearing Works in the Brain,” tells how UCSF neurosurgeon Edward Chang, MD, a faculty member in the UCSF Department of Neurological Surgery and the Keck Center for Integrative Neuroscience, and UCSF postdoctoral fellow Nima Mesgarani, PhD, worked with three patients that went through a brain surgery for their severe epilepsy. The UCSF team performed an experiment on the patients. The patients had to listen to two speech samples (that played at the same time) where different phrases were spoken by different people. After, the patients had to identify words that they heard were spoken by one of the two speakers. In the end, the UCSF team found that neural responses in the auditory cortex (the part of the brain that deals with hearing information) only reflected those of the targeted speaker. Edward Chang stated, “The algorithm worked so well that we could predict not only the correct responses, but also even when they paid attention to the wrong word.” This experiment opens the door toward conducting more research and focusing on ways of examining disorders like attention deficit disorder.
When was the last time you completely ignored what someone was saying to you, and not even notice that the individual was talking to you? Well, that would be selective hearing. People use selective hearing throughout their lives to focus on something that they want to hear. Selective hearing occurs involuntarily throughout some humans. Unfortunately, selective hearing does not have a cure. However, selective hearing it is not harmful (it will just make the person speaking to you mad).
This article was very educational, and interesting. Before reading this article, I did not understand the scientific explanation of how selective hearing works in the brain (but know I do). However, the article should have talked about the percentage of human population that suffers with selective hearing.
http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2012/04/18/how_selective_hearing_works_in_the_brain.html
"How Selective Hearing Works in the Brain." Biology News Net. 18 Apr. 2012 . Web. 26 Apr. 2012 . http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2012/04/18/how_selective_hearing_works_in_the_brain.html.
http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2012/04/18/how_selective_hearing_works_in_the_brain.html
I made my comment on my classmate Maria’s article. Her article was titled, “How Selective Hearing Works in the Brain.” I found many aspects of her review to be well presented. To begin, I found that Maria did a great job in choosing her article. I believe this because I know each and every one of us has dealt with selective hearing in their conversations at one point in their life. Whether it was themselves who were spacing out and not listening to their friend speak, or their friend wasn’t listening to them, selective hearing frequently occurs in everyday life, so Maria’s choice for her article immediately grabbed my attention. I also found the experiment regarding selective hearing to be well conducted and Maria explained what they did quite well. Lastly, Maria presented her reflection very well, as she related it to our life, and also explained how unfortunately it does not have a cure.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I was impressed by Maria’s review, I think that there were some parts that could have been cleared up to improve it. The main thing that confused me was that in the beginning of the article, Maria stated that people with selective hearing were not the same as those who simply tuned out everything in their environment because people with selective hearing do not realize when they are doing it. However, in her reflection, I found that the two were getting mixed up, as she said completely ignoring someone was selective hearing, while that also seems like tuning everything in your environment out. I also found that the experiment’s results could have been explained further, as I was not quite sure was had been accomplished with the results.
Lastly, from Maria’s review, I learned that selective hearing can not be cured, although it is not an extremely serious disease anyway.
I found this review done by Maria to have some very interesting points, and very few negatives. For example, Maria described selective hearing well, I completely understood this review, and she didn't use complicated language to further confuse the reader. I also found that the article she reviewed was relevant to everyday life, because people with selective hearing commonly are effected by in due to these people having the ability to tune multiple people out to hear the thing they want to hear. I think Maria did a good job of explaining the process of how selective hearing was discovered and what details were included in the condition as well.
ReplyDeleteWhile the review was well done, there were some points Maria could've improved on. For instance, when talking about the experiment, she could've explained a bit more on how it opened doors to conducting more research and focusing on disorders. I also think that explaining why the patients experimented on were epileptic, because I don't see why any person could work for that situation.
From Maria's review, I mainly learned that there was a reason I could tune out people that I didn't want to hear, and listen to what I want involuntarily, and that this was due to selective hearing, which cannot be cured.
I think that Maria did a good job reviewing the article, “How Selective Hearing works in the Brain”. I think that Maria did a good job for several reasons. Firstly, Maria did a good job summarizing the article and including the important details. Also, She did a good job selecting this article, because it is very interesting. Finally, Maria did a very good job explaining why she enjoyed the article and how it relates to herself.
ReplyDeleteI had a difficulty understanding her explanation of “selective hearing”, because she changed the definition halfway through the article. Also, Maria could have better explained how this was a breakthrough experiment and she could have explained its significance.
In conclusion, I enjoyed reading Maria’s article because it was very intriguing and I think that selective hearing affects me
This article was nicely reviewed. In particular, I think the reviewer explained well what selective hearing was and that not all people have it. I think she also was diligent with including facts from the study, outlining the number of participants, the actual procedure for the experiment, and even the neuroscience part relating to the different parts of the brain that would be tested. And I noticed that she definitely connected this study to everyday life: selective hearing is something relevant to how people interact with each other and it is an involuntary thing.
ReplyDeleteThe connection made between selective hearing and disorders like epilepsy and ADD was a little too nebulous, though. I think the reviewer could have prefaced their roles in this study better. I think the reviewer would also do better with explaining the flaws and limitations of this study because it doesn’t seem so realistic. Especially because there doesn’t appear to be such exceptionally life-changing results. I’m also wondering if this study—or maybe others in this field—examined neurotypical subjects as well as some that had suffered epileptic seizures.
I’m glad I read this review because I hadn’t heard before that selective-hearing was connected to involuntary and deep-rooted neurological processes, which could be an effect of disorders like ADD.
My classmate Maria, did a splendid job reviewing the interesting article, “How Selective Hearing Works in the Brain.” Firstly I think she did a phenomenal job explaining exactly what selective hearing was, which gave us a solid amount of background information that helped understand the rest of the review. Another thing I think she did well was the run through of all of the different experiments that the scientists at UCSF underwent. This detailed explanation really helped pull together the article. A final thing I think she did well was the incorporation of quotes from the article, more specifically from scientists actually involved in the original experiment.
ReplyDeleteA few things I think she could have improved on is, most significantly, the use of the names of the doctors and scientists that were involved in the experiment. Although she went in to an immense amount of detail in order to supply the information that we needed, the constant name drops of different researchers became redundant and ultimately made understanding a whole part of the review a hassle. Another thing I think she could have improved on is maybe providing an explanation on how the UCSF team came to the conclusion about the neural responses. I feel the conclusion was abrupt and maybe going into further detail could have solved this.
Overall, I think Maria did an excellent job reviewing an excellent article. I learned about a whole topic of selective hearing that I had no idea was so detailed and so complex before. This was very interesting to me.
My peer, Maria, did a great job reviewing the article, “How Selective Hearing Works in the Brain.” First, Maria gave a really great summary of the article, and provided some great points in order to help the reader understand the intricacies of the brain. Secondly, Maria helped explain what exactly selective hearing is. While selective hearing is something that many people do on a daily basis, I found it interesting that thee was an actual article written on it, because I assumed that people didn't pay that much attention to it. Lastly, Maria's grammar and layout was pretty good. Her review wasn't difficult to read; this was most likely due to the fact that she was a good explainer and she kept everything neat.
ReplyDeleteI found issue with very few things in her summary. One thing i wished she had changed would be her lack of examples of selective hearing. While I did understand what selective hearing was from her explanation, I could have understood it even better has she provided some nice details. Finally, Maria's article explained what selective hearing was but didnt really relate it to the world. If she had ended the article with a commentary on how to rid the world of selective hearing (hypothetically), or said why it might be a good thing, it would have been more of an interesting read.
Overall, Maria did a great job on the review, and help explained something to us that many people are unaware of even doing. I found this to be interesting.
Maria did a great job of reviewing ‘How Selective Hearing Works in the Brain’ from Biology News Net. Maria relayed the information very clearly, from the article, which helped to understand the experiment and procedure. I also thought, that it was great that she included her own perspective on the article. I agree with Maria that the article could have been improved if they had included the percentage of human population that suffers selective hearing.
ReplyDeleteEven though the article was reviewed clearly, to improve Maria’s review I thought she could have related selective breeding to biology. It would have been interesting if she included what this means for the future.
This article was very interesting to read and I was not aware that there is no cure for selective hearing.
I thought that my classmate Maria did an excellent job reviewing the article entitled, “How Selective Hearing Works in the Brain.” I really liked how she started off her review by giving a clear and concise summary of the article. Giving an understandable, complete, and short summary of a complex idea is very difficult and she was able to do this well. I also liked how she defined any scientific terms that she used. This was very helpful because without reading the actual article I would not have known what she was talking about. I also liked how she made the distinction between someone who has selective hearing (the condition) and someone who chooses to listen selectively. Finally, I liked the way that she started off her second paragraph with a question. Her voice, as a writer, in this section is very clear and strong which gave this paragraph a lot of character.
ReplyDeleteAlthough Maria did an excellent job reviewing this article, there are some areas that she could improve which would make her review even stronger. Towards the end of the first paragraph I started to get confused and couldn’t follow the point that she was trying to get across. She could have made certain areas of her review a little more understandable. In addition, she had some awkward sentences and phrases throughout her review which made reading the review difficult at points. Some of the phrasing and wording took away from the overall flow of the review. However, other than those to minor details I found this review to be very informative and I ended up learning a lot from it.
I learned a great deal of information from this review. For example, I learned that there is a difference between selective hearing, the actual scientific condition, and people who listen “selectively.” Before this I had never known it was an actual condition that couldn’t be cured.