The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource

by Chris Hayes

But something far more complicated and subtle is at work in hearing your own name in a parallel conversation. That moment of recognition necessarily implies that even as you were focusing on one conversation and tuning out the others, some component of your brain was, like a sentry, eavesdropping on all the other conversations within earshot, transcribing and processing the words in those exchanges, on the lookout for some keywords—in particular your name. That’s pretty wild! Think of the sheer processing capacity needed to pull this off. Your conscious brain is hard at work making conversation, while in the background your own mental Cocktail Party NSA wiretaps all the other conversations with a list of keywords that will ring some kind of internal alarm. All of this is happening in real time, in hundredths or thousandths of seconds.