Cocktail party problem and brain filters noise.

Definition
The cocktail party effect describes the ability to focus one's listening attention on a single talker among a mixture of conversatio.

the difficulty of focusing one's attention on a single auditory source within a jumble of noises; the process of selective listening

Example:

In a room where several conversations are taking place, one can focus on one of them and ignore the rest: the cocktail party effect.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_separation http://www.vislab.uq.edu.au/education/sc3/2001/johan/johan.pdf http://www.google.co.in/imgres?imgurl=http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/solving-the-cocktail-party-problem_1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id%3Dsolving-the-cocktail-party-problem&h=277&w=277&sz=24&tbnid=8muWlbzkszZqLM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=90&zoom=1&usg=__bLh7WXcwQuu5dUEpesKwk8stzBU=&docid=Rv5HEND87n4-bM&sa=X&ei=GpfJUNPkC4mXiAfGgoHQDg&ved=0CF4Q9QEwBg&dur=4636 https://www.google.co.in/search?q=cocktail+party+problem&rlz=1C1IRFF_enIN511IN511&oq=cocktail+party+problem&aqs=chrome.0.57j59l2j60l2.6388343&sugexp=chrome,mod=17&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/~kristof/research/papers/phd/2003/index.html The cocktail party effect: How the brain filters noise  The brain filters noise. This is called the cocktail party effect Our left side of the brain is more active when we discriminate relevant sounds from background noise, according to the findings of a study by an international team of scientists. The result is the so called cocktail party effect. A night out is often a frustrating experience for hearing impaired people. They find the words of their conversation partners drowned out by the conversations of others, music or street noise. They lack the ability of people with normal hearing to separate relevant sounds from background noise - the cocktail party effect. Left side of brain sorts out the sounds Brain researchers have investigated what happens in the brain when discriminating between the sounds we listen for and other noise. The study was headed by Hideko Okamoto of the University of Münster, Germany. He and his team exposed a number of individuals to test sounds and background noise in one or both ears while monitoring their brain activity. The recorded brain activity indicated greater activity in the left half of the brain when discriminating sounds from noise. In other words, the cocktail party effect occurs in the left side of the brain. As of yet, the researchers are unable to determine why hearing impaired people’s ability to discriminate sounds from noise is diminished and reduce the cocktail party effect. This is a matter for future research. Knowledge about the brain functions including the cocktail party effect will eventually benefit hearing impaired people in terms of the development of new treatment methods and assistive devices and help them to keep the cocktail party effect. Source: BMC Biology http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~poczos/other_presentations/ICA_26_10_2009.pdf  http://www.statsoc.ulg.ac.be/publis/BugliLambert2006ComparsionBetweenPCAandICAinEEGModelling.pdf http://www.statssa.gov.za/isi2009/ScientificProgramme/IPMS/0042.pdf  IMP   face recognization http://www.face-rec.org/algorithms/Comparisons/draper_cviu.pdf