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auditory processing

This shows two people listening to music and touching arms.

Auditory Neuroscience Featured Neuroscience

·October 13, 2025·4 min read

Why the Brain Feels the Beat Better Through Sound Than Touch

A new study reveals that the human brain synchronizes more accurately with rhythm when listening to music than when feeling it through touch. When people tap along to sound, slow rhythmic brain waves align with the perceived beat, helping maintain steady timing.

This shows a person walking and sound waves.

Auditory Neuroscience Featured Neuroscience

·September 29, 2025·3 min read

Walking Tunes the Brain to Sounds, Sharpens Auditory Awareness

A new study shows that walking enhances how the brain processes auditory information, sharpening responses compared to standing still. When participants walked in a figure-eight path, their brains responded more strongly to sounds, and turning direction influenced whether responses were enhanced or suppressed in each ear.

This shows a brain and a clock with speech bubbles.

Auditory Neuroscience Featured Neuroscience

·September 18, 2025·6 min read

Speeding Up Speech Doesn’t Speed Up Brain Processing

New research shows that when people listen to speech at different speeds, the auditory cortex does not adjust its timing but instead processes sound in a fixed time window. This discovery challenges the long-standing idea that the brain flexibly adapts its processing pace to match speech rhythms.

Auditory Neuroscience Featured Neuroscience

·August 13, 2025·5 min read

Musicians Show No Edge in Early Brain Sound Processing

A large-scale study challenges the long-held belief that musical training boosts the brain’s earliest stages of sound processing. Using a sample size over four times larger than earlier studies, researchers found no difference between musicians and non-musicians in subcortical auditory responses or in recognizing speech amid background noise.

Auditory Neuroscience Featured Neuroscience Psychology

·February 11, 2025·4 min read

Stress Alters How the Brain Processes Sound

Chronic stress weakens the brain’s ability to process sounds, requiring louder stimuli to trigger normal responses, according to new research in mice. Scientists found that stress affects inhibitory brain cells, which suppress responses to lower-decibel sounds while maintaining sensitivity to louder noises.

This shows the outline of a head and a brain.

Auditory Neuroscience Featured Neuroscience Visual Neuroscience

·January 14, 2025·4 min read

Brain Merges Sight and Sound to Understand Speech in Noisy Settings

Researchers are investigating how the brain combines visual and auditory cues to improve speech comprehension in noisy environments. The study focuses on how visual information, like lip movements, enhances the brain's ability to differentiate similar sounds, such as "F" and "S."

Auditory Neuroscience Featured Neuroscience

·July 11, 2024·5 min read

Brain Region Helps Tune Our Hearing to Focus on Important Sounds

A new study uncovers how the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) aids the auditory cortex in adapting to different hearing contexts. Researchers found that the OFC sends signals to the auditory cortex to help switch between passive and active listening. This discovery enhances our understanding of how the brain filters and reacts to sounds, with implications for treating neurodevelopmental disorders. The findings highlight the OFC's crucial role in managing auditory attention.

Auditory Neuroscience Featured Neuroscience

·May 28, 2024·5 min read

How the Brain Distinguishes Music from Speech

A new study reveals how our brain distinguishes between music and speech using simple acoustic parameters. Researchers found that slower, steady sounds are perceived as music, while faster, irregular sounds are perceived as speech.

This shows a person surrounded by sound waves

Auditory Neuroscience Featured Neuroscience Visual Neuroscience

·December 7, 2022·5 min read

Hearing Is Believing: Sounds Can Alter Our Visual Perception

Certain auditory cues not only help us recognize an object more quickly, but they also even alter our visual perception.

This shows people surrounded by speech bubbles

Auditory Neuroscience Featured Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles

·November 7, 2022·4 min read

Our Brains ‘Time-Stamp’ Sounds to Process the Words We Hear

The brain processes speech by using a buffer, maintaining a "time stamp" of the past three speech sounds. Findings also reveal the brain processes multiple sounds at the same time without mixing up the identity of each sound by passing information between neurons in the auditory cortex.

Featured Neurology Neuroscience

·October 29, 2022·6 min read

Fetterman’s Struggles With Language Highlight the Challenges After a Stroke: Understanding Aphasia and the Path to Recovery

US Senate candidate, John Fetterman, who suffered a stroke earlier this year, has been criticized by the opposition for his performance in recent broadcasts and in this week's debate. Following his stroke, Fetterman developed aphasia, auditory processing, and speech issues which have led some to question his fitness for office. While aphasia and auditory processing disorders can make the speech of sufferers difficult to understand, they do not imply cognitive impairments. Researchers shed light on aphasia and stroke recovery, reporting auditory processing symptoms as a result of stroke do not alter one's intelligence, behavior, or other executive abilities.