来自UCL的最新研究发现当人们把注意力集中在视觉任务上，就会立刻对周围的声音"听而不闻"，相关研究结果发表在国际学术期刊Journal of Neuroscience上，这表明听觉和视觉共享有限的神经资源。
研究人员在13名志愿者参与视觉任务的过程中对其进行脑部扫描发现脑部对声音的应答显著下降。视觉任务期间检测他们感知声音的能力同样表明即使声音非常清晰，他们对声音的捕获能力失败率也会更高，只有当视觉任务比较简单时他们才能准确感知声音信号。
文章共同作者Dr Maria Chait解释道："通过这项实验研究，我们可以建立因果关系。我们发现当志愿者们进行视觉任务时，他们听不到平常能够听到的声音，脑部扫描结果表明人们不仅仅是忽视或过滤掉声音，他们可能压根儿就没有听到声音。"
这种"非注意耳聋"现象导致我们在集中注意力于其他事情时注意不到声音的存在，而研究人员之前也观察到过这一现象。但是这是首次利用脑磁图描记术（MEG）测量脑部活性明确这一现象，研究人员认为这些影响是由听觉处理非常早期阶段的脑部机制驱动的，正是因为如此才导致人们对声音的"听而不闻"。
文章另外一位共同作者Nilli Lavie这样说道："'非注意耳聋'是我们日常生活中一种常见的现象，现在我们知道原因是什么了。比如说，如果你想要跟别人谈话，而他正聚精会神读一本书，玩游戏或者看电视，你可能不会得到回应，但他们并不是想要故意忽视你，他们可能只是没有听到你在说什么！这也能解释为什么在火车站或汽车站的时候，如果你正集中注意力看手机，读书或者看报，你就有可能听不到登车提醒而让你错过行程。"
研究人员表示，这一现象在一些特殊情况下会造成更为严重的问题，比如汽车司机，骑行者被路边的广告或者美女吸引，行人专注于自己的手机，走路的时候发短信，都更加容易发生"非注意耳聋"，只有喇叭或者警示声音足够大才会引起当事人的注意，而类似自行车铃铛或者汽车的引擎声音很可能就会被忽视掉，可能导致危险的发生。
DOI:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2931-15.2015
Inattentional Deafness: Visual Load Leads to Time-Specific Suppression of Auditory Evoked Responses
Katharine Molloy1,2, Timothy D. Griffiths3,4, Maria Chait2,*, and Nilli Lavie
Due to capacity limits on perception, conditions of high perceptual load lead to reduced processing of unattended stimuli (Lavie et al., 2014). Accumulating work demonstrates the effects of visual perceptual load on visual cortex responses, but the effects on auditory processing remain poorly understood. Here we establish the neural mechanisms underlying "inattentional deafness"-the failure to perceive auditory stimuli under high visual perceptual load. Participants performed a visual search task of low (target dissimilar to nontarget items) or high (target similar to nontarget items) load. On a random subset (50%) of trials, irrelevant tones were presented concurrently with the visual stimuli. Brain activity was recorded with magnetoencephalography, and time-locked responses to the visual search array and to the incidental presence of unattended tones were assessed. High, compared to low, perceptual load led to increased early visual evoked responses (within 100 ms from onset). This was accompanied by reduced early (?100 ms from tone onset) auditory evoked activity in superior temporal sulcus and posterior middle temporal gyrus. A later suppression of the P3 "awareness" response to the tones was also observed under high load. A behavioral experiment revealed reduced tone detection sensitivity under high visual load, indicating that the reduction in neural responses was indeed associated with reduced awareness of the sounds. These findings support a neural account of shared audiovisual resources, which, when depleted under load, leads to failures of sensory perception and awareness.