How do you speak in public effectively when the room is full of other voices? A University of Helsinki study, published on 26 October 2026 in the Journal of Neuroscience, offers an interesting clue: a listener's brain follows a speech better when its content carries emotional weight and when the sentences are linked by a clear thread.
It is not a public speaking manual, and it does not claim to be. It is a laboratory study of how the brain picks out one voice amid the hubbub, the so-called cocktail party effect. But some of its conclusions speak directly to anyone who has to present a project, run a meeting or be heard at an event.
What the researchers did
The team led by Pyry Heikkinen, of the University of Helsinki's psychology department, recreated a crowded party in the lab. Participants watched and listened to a dialogue between two people while, at the same time, a second dialogue they had to ignore was playing. Meanwhile, their brain activity was recorded with magnetoencephalography, a technique that measures the magnetic signals produced by neurons with millisecond precision.
The researchers varied two elements independently of each other: the emotional content of the conversations and their coherence, that is, whether the lines followed a thread or jumped from one topic to another.
Here are the study's key figures:
- 32 adult participants, 18 women and 14 men;
- 2 simultaneous dialogues: one to follow, one to ignore;
- 2 variables controlled separately: emotional charge and coherence of the conversation;
- 100-250 milliseconds: the window in which emotion and coherence act together on the brain's response;
- 270-450 milliseconds: the later window, in which emotional content matters most.
Emotional content strengthens listening
The main finding concerns so-called neural speech tracking: how faithfully brain activity follows the rhythm of the voice being listened to. When the dialogue dealt with unpleasant, intense and socially relevant topics, this tracking was stronger than in neutral conversations.
One detail should not be overlooked: the effect appeared only for the dialogue participants were paying attention to, not for the one they had to ignore. In other words, in the study emotion did not pull attention towards the background conversation: it made listening to what was already being followed more solid. It is also worth remembering that the emotional content tested was negative; the study says nothing, for example, about the effect of enthusiasm or humour.
A clear thread matters as much as emotion
The second finding concerns structure. The emotion-related boost appeared earlier in coherent dialogues, the ones that were easy to follow, than in dialogues where topics changed abruptly. According to the authors, when speech has continuity, listeners use the context to anticipate what is coming next, and this makes processing more efficient.
The step from the lab to the meeting room should be taken with caution: there were 32 participants and the situation was controlled. Still, the finding suggests a principle that anyone who works on communication knows well: an audience that does not have to struggle to see where you are going has more energy left to grasp the meaning of what you say.
How to speak in public effectively, in light of the study
Without stretching the results, a few practical pointers can be drawn for anyone taking the floor in noisy settings, literally or figuratively:
- state what is at stake at the start: why the topic matters to the listeners, not just to the speaker;
- build a clear sequence in which each step connects to the previous one, and avoid unannounced jumps between topics;
- use concrete examples and recognisable situations, which give the content social relevance;
- signal changes of topic with a transition sentence, so listeners can reorient themselves;
- remember that attention has to be won first: in the study, emotion strengthened the listening of those who were already following.
Voice, presence and content work together
The study measures the content of words and how they are organised, not tone, posture or eye contact. In real life, though, all these elements arrive together: a coherent, meaningful speech, supported by a confident voice and a polished presence, stands a better chance of standing out when there are other voices, other messages and other distractions all around.
CG Imagine's Com-On communication programme works on exactly this: giving a talk a structure that is easy to follow and content that touches the listeners, together with voice and body language, so that even in a room full of chatter yours is the voice the audience's brain chooses to follow.
Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash
