How phones ring a bell in your head

THE instant you hear a cellphone ring, your brain reacts in a unique way – if the ringtone matches that of your own phone.

Anja Roye of the University of Leipzig in Germany and colleagues recorded the text-alert tones of 12 volunteers, then played them all the tones, at the same volume and in a random order, while recording their neural activity via scalp electrodes.

In the first trial, volunteers watched a muted, subtitled film while listening to the tones. In the next trial there was no film to distract the volunteers, but they were…