Dynamics of Distraction: Physiological Correlates of Selective Listening Revealed in Brain Electrical Dynamics

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One of the most amazing skills of the human brain is its ability to discern individual streams of information, such as a single voice, from a complex mixture of many simultaneous sources of sound. This ability is called selective listening and it is one example of the broader phenomenon of selective attention. As we all know, selective listening is not perfect. Sometimes we are distracted by other sounds or even input to our other senses. Surprisingly, the field of Cognitive Neuroscience has not devoted much effort to understanding the underlying mechanisms of distraction. This is probably because we intuitively think of distraction as simply "not attending", but this is an error of oversimplification. What happens to auditory circuits when conflicting input disrupts their ability to effectively process sounds? Are there multiple mechanisms of distraction acting at different stages of cortical processing? Are there ways to prevent distraction by augmenting important signals in the auditory world? The research proposed here has two goals. The first goal is to test the theory that auditory distraction arises when oscillating neuroelectric signals in the brain become temporally uncoupled from the acoustic events in the auditory scene. The resulting phenomenon, which I call Distraction Decoherence, would disrupt the efficiency with which the brain accomplishes selective listening. The second goal is to develop ways to detect the neural signatures of distraction using state-of-the-art wireless EEG devices. If we can detect moments of distraction then we can develop neurotechnologies that redirect attention toward important events in the sensory world.