A study found that the brain transforms speech deemed boring to make it more dynamic.
The brain is so made that it does not retain all information in its raw format. He thus happens to modify them for a more relevant storage. More than ten years ago, a study had thus revealed that the brain rewrites, in a way, the speeches that it considers boring.
A study on boring speech and how it is received by the brain
The research was conducted by researchers from the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Glasgow (Scotland). The brains of 18 people had been analyzed via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while listening to short audio sequences. The messages heard were direct or indirect quotes.
An “inner voice” would make the monotony more dynamic
As reported by the Telegraph, speeches were either delivered vividly or monotonously. Among them, this direct quote: “This movie was horrible, I’ve never been so bored in my life”. It was found that activity in areas of the brain’s auditory cortex, the part that controls human speech, increased when listening to direct, monotonous speech. The scientists saw here the probable proof of the existence of an “inner voice” modifying a speech considered too boring.
A “very picky” organ on its perception of speech
In his commentary on the results, Dr. Bo Yao, the main signatory of the study, had underlined a particular expectation of the brain in the reception of certain words: “We can think that the brain does not need to produce its own speech when it listens to already formed speech. But it would seem that the brain is very picky about the speech it hears. When the brain hears direct quotes spoken monotonously and expects them to be livelier, it just ‘talks over’ the speech it hears by producing its own livelier words. . In doing so, the brain tries to optimize the processing of incoming speech, ensuring faster and more accurate responses.”