Learn the Brain Changes During Simply Hearing and Listening

What happens to your brain when you shift between simply hearing and listening? Scientists at the University of Basel have traced the neuronal fingerprint of the two types of sound processing in the mouse brain, published in the journal Cell Reports. The team examined the neurons’ (brain cells) activity in four different areas of the mice brains that are involved in increasingly complex sound processing.

It was observed that there were significant changes observed among the majority of neuronal activity as they switched between hearing and listening.

“But this doesn’t mean that all neurons behaved the same way. We actually found ten distinct and specific types of activity change,” says Dr. Gioia De Franceschi from the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Basel.

Moreover, the team also states that attention equally alters the brain activity in areas that were previously thought to perform only basic forms of sound processing.

“The results make it clear that even the detection of a simple sound is a cognitive process that profoundly and extensively shapes the way the brain works, even at very early stages of sensory processing,” says Neuroscientists Professor Tania Rinaldi Barkat, Department of Biomedicine at the University of Basel.

Source-Medindia