Brain "rewrites" monotonous speech of boring people

 

Research has shown that people listening to dreary discussions cope by creating an “inner voice” to drown out the offending speech. The study revealed the response is triggered the moment the brain hears “monotonously-spoken” words it feels should be more expressive. The resulting increased brain activity points to the existence of an inner voice which creates “more vivid speech” as a replacement. Dr Bo Yao, the principal author of the research, said: “You may think the brain need not produce its own speech while listening to one that is already available. But, apparently, the brain is very picky on the speech it hears. “When the brain hears monotonously-spoken direct speech quotations which it expects to be more vivid, the brain simply 'talks over' the speech it hears with more vivid speech utterances of its own.