Radio interview with Jonathan Simon on "the cocktail party problem"

Professor Jonathan Simon (ECE/Biology/ISR) was a recent guest on the BYUradio program, “Top of Mind with Julie Rose.” Rose interviewed Simon about findings from the recent paper he, ISR Postdoctoral Researcher Christian Brodbeck and L. Elliot Hong of the University of Maryland School of Medicine published in the Cell Press/Elsevier journal Current Biology. The paper, “Rapid transformation from auditory to linguistic representations of continuous speech,” described where in the brain, and how quickly—in milliseconds—the brain’s neurons transition from processing the sound of speech to processing the language-based words of the speech.

In a lively segment titled “The Cocktail Party Problem,” Simon and Rose talked at length about the research findings, how quickly the brain recognizes speech, and whether or not we can pay attention to more than one person talking at the same time.

The Brigham Young University radio program covers topics in the news and daily events. BYUradio streams live 24/7 at BYUradio.org and broadcast to a nationwide audience of more than 56 million listeners on SiriusXM Satellite Radio channel 143. Top of Mind with Julie Rose is also available as a podcast from the usual sources.

| Listen to the program on BYUradio | Read our original news story about the research |

Published January 17, 2019