Sound engineers are trying to figure out how people can focus in a single speaker while tuning out other talkers in a t crowded, noisy room. This is known as the "cocktail party effect."
"Watching" the brain in action with fMRI machines reveals that the representation of speech in the cortex does not reflect the entire external acoustic environment but instead just what we really want or need to hear.
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A hum coming from somewhere in Detroit is driving people across the border in Canada crazy, to the extent that it’s become a become an international diplomatic incident: Canada dispatched an aide to their foreign minister to the area to try to find its source and put a stop to it.
In the April 30th edition of the Wall Street Journal, Alistair MacDonald and Paul Vieira describe the "Windsor hum" as a low-frequency rumbling sound that can be as loud as an idling diesel truck and can rattle windows and knock objects off of shelves. Many Canadians keep their furnaces or air conditioners turned on all the time in order to drown out the noise.
But here’s what’s really strange: People on the American side of the border can’t hear it.
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At our Dreamland Festival in May, one of the main things we’re going to investigate are the mysterious sounds that are being heard all around the world (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show and they get 10% off Festival tickets too!)
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On Earthfiles.com, Linda Howe reports that on Thursday, February 23, a low rumbling sound was heard in Arlington, Washington, from the morning through the night, growing in intensity at 7 p.m. It was so loud that several of the people who heard it say it vibrated the bones in their chests. Arlington is about 35 miles southeast of a Naval Air Station–could it have been an airplane noise?
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