What makes one part of a day more memorable than another? Alan Smeaton, Director of INSIGHT Centre for Data Analytics, is using EEG technology to measure levels of electrical activity in the brain to better understand how it relates to the person's attention level, and potentially provide insight into human memory encoding and processing. The program also discusses the "cocktail party effect" - the ability of the human brain to listen to one conversation in a noisy environment and filter out other conversations in a way that computers can't - and considers how this research could be used to develop 'smart' hearing aids that would identify what conversation the wearer is listening to and in real time boost the audio signal for that conversation while filtering out extraneous sound. It also looks at research into whether our minds can connect directly with computers to communicate thoughts and examines the development of assistive technologies for people with disabilities.

Originally released by Network Ireland Television, 2017. Streaming video file encoded with permission for digital streaming by Infobase on June 15, 2023.