The hum of your refrigerator, the distant sound of a motorcycle or a train, the background noise of a TV in another room – we live in a world of sound, and our minds basically never stop analyzing the audio we perceive, even when we’re asleep. That’s because our brains are meaning-making machines, not just because we can do it, but because we have to – our sound minds never turn off, because parsing the world through audio cues has been a part of survival for millennia. Today we’re talking to Dr. Nina Kraus about her book, “Of Sound Mind” and learning how brains process audio, discovering how we can better understand this primal function, and exploring ways marketers can be a part of their audience’s sonic world.
A Sonic Scientist
Dr. Nina Kraus is a neuroscientist who has done path breaking research on sound and hearing for more than thirty years. Dr. Kraus is the Hugh Knowles Professor of Neurobiology, Communication Sciences, and Otolaryngology at Northwestern University – in her new book “Of Sound Mind” Dr. Kraus examines the partnership of sound and brain, showing for the first time how the processing of sound drives many of the brain’s core functions, and she’s here today on the podcast to talk about it all.
“The Sound To Meaning Connections We Make Are Important.”
From an early age, Dr. Kraus found sound both a safe haven and a curiosity. What started as hanging out under the piano while her mom was playing transformed into a lifelong fascination, but it wasn’t a direct route. In college she majored in comparative literature, but found biology when she took a class to meet a requirement. “I never felt I belonged to a single field,” she says, but she quickly began blazing her own path using her open minded approach. “My dissertation was recording single neurons response to sound in rabbits. I can teach the rabbit the sound has some kind of meaning, it’s the same rabbit, same sound but the response is different, and I was interested in learning how people and people’s experience with sound works the same way.”
The conversation continues down this path of discovery and connections, as Dr. Kraus elaborates,” Sound is invisible and we live in a visually biased society yet it’s a profound force in our lives and our environments.” He book, “Of Sound Mind” further delves into the unraveling ‘”what sound does to us and how our brains are formed and changed by sound, and what influences sound processing in the brain.” This may sound complex, but she assures us that it’s a conversational book and doesn’t presume any biological knowledge, making this an accessible read for anyone who’s interested in “how do we learn biologically through sound.”
We continue to discuss the idea of sonic learning and in particular how marketers can be more effective with their use of sound by being more selective of the sounds we use, respecting the listeners bandwidth and attention and not forgetting to leaves some space in. “Sonic branding works because our brain makes those connections but you have to treat that with respect “
References & Resources
Hot take – https://mashable.com/article/facebook-notification-ui-sound-memory BrainVolts – https://brainvolts.northwestern.edu/ “Of Sound Mind” by Dr. Nina Kraus available here – https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262545075/LISTEN TO THE FULL SHOW -> Stay tuned, stay curious and subscribe to Sounds Like Marketing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or add it as a Favorite on your podcast player of choice.
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