'This may make it easier for people to combine sounds and images that belong to the same object, such as the dribbling of a basketball,' he said.

The next step for the researchers is to determine exactly how the brain distinguishes between rock drum beats and the strings of a symphony or from a French conversation to an English one.

'Our goal is to disentangle exactly how the brain extracts these different types of sounds. This step may eventually let us reconstruct a song that a person has heard according to the activity pattern in their brain,' explained Schonwiesner.

As scientists advance in decoding brain activation patterns, mind-boggling applications can be envisaged, he said.

These findings were published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.