Eli5: Why are peoples’ own noises and smells usually dialed down, such as not being affected by their own snoring and not noticing their body odor?

Question

Why does the brain seems to dial down things that we produce; even the obnoxious snoring or noises made while sleeping don’t affect us? Similarly, people don’t usually get annoyed by their own talking or yelling to themselves.

In: Other

Answer 1

The most basic signs of “intelligence” is the ability to respond to your environment. You poke the thing, it reacts

The next step on the intelligence ladder is ignoring stimuli. You poke the thing often enough, it will stop reacting when you poke it.

Your brain is constantly fed an amazing amount of information, so to save on processing power it chooses to ignore certain things. You can hear your own heart beat/ feel yourself breathing/ feel your clothes/ smell yourself. But, because these things are always there, your mind chooses to ignore it in favor of processing other stuff.

So, why can’t people smell themselves? They can, their brain just chooses to ignore it.