Walking shapes how our brains process sound

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German and Chinese scientists say walking changes the way our brains process sound. They asked 30 people to walk in a figure eight pattern as they listened to a continuous stream of sound while their brains were scanned. They found stronger brain responses while walking as opposed to standing still or walking on the spot. They also noticed that walking in different directions prompted different brain responses. When turning right, the brain initially focused on sounds from the right ear, but this was then suppressed in favour of sounds from the left ear. They then introduced bursts of sounds into the continuous stream and found these disrupted the brain's response, and led to a new response. This effect was strongest when walking, but only when the sound bursts were in just a single ear, rather than both. The findings suggest our brains are particularly sensitive to unexpected sounds from the side when we're walking, which could help us react faster to danger and do a better job of navigating in unfamiliar places, the authors say.

Media release

From: Society for Neuroscience

Walking shapes how people process sound

The path people take while walking can influence how the brain responds to sounds.
Does walking influence how people process sensory information, like sounds, from the environment? In a new study, researchers led by Liyu Cao, from Zhejiang University, and Barbara Händel, from University of Würzburg, explored whether walking direction influences how people process sounds.

Thirty volunteers walked in an eight-shaped path as they listened to a continuous stream of sound with changing intensities while researchers collected recordings of brain activity. People had stronger neural responses to sound while walking as opposed to standing or walking in place. These responses changed to the same degree as manipulations to sound intensity. Notably, different walking directions changed how the brain responded to sound. Cao provides an example, “When people made a right turn, responses to sounds from the right ear were enhanced at the beginning of the turn and then suppressed, relative to the responses to sounds from left. This could reflect a change in attention during turns.”

When the authors introduced bursts of tones into the sound stream, these tones disrupted the brain’s associative response and elicited a different response. As before, this response was strongest during walking, but only when the sound bursts happened in one ear as opposed to both ears. This finding suggests that neural responses may be particularly sensitive to auditory input from the periphery when people are walking.

Bridging the findings together, says Cao, “This could reflect a filtering operation of the brain: It might actively suppress predictable background sounds—like our own footsteps—while increasing sensitivity to unexpected sounds from the side. This might allow for faster reaction times and safer navigation in dynamic environments. It could also suggest that our auditory system appears to be optimized for detecting novelty and deviation during movement.”

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Journal/
conference: JNeurosci

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: University of Würzburg, Germany, Zhejiang University, China

Funder: The work was funded by the European Research Council awarded to BF Haendel (Grant Number 677819).

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