Scientists have proven the ability of people to hear silence
Miscellaneous / / July 12, 2023
That is why pauses in conversation can be uncomfortable.
Scientists from Johns Hopkins University (USA) have proved that the human brain literally hears silence. Study this was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The authors of the work conducted seven experiments involving thousands of volunteers. They were given single or repeated pauses to listen to in the background of the noise of a train, a busy restaurant, a market, a playground, and so on. That is, they reversed the well-known “one means more” illusion, which makes the listener think that two separate sounds are shorter than one, although in fact their total time is the same.
As it turned out, the brain similarly perceives repeated pauses as shorter than one. In other words, he processes silence in the same way as sounds. That is why people may experience discomfort during pauses in a conversation, the authors note.
Illusions and effects that are considered typical in sound processing were also obtained with silence, suggesting that people actually hear the absence of sound.
Jan Phillips
Philosopher and psychologist at Johns Hopkins University
Now the team wants to see how the brain perceives silence when it is completely disconnected from sound, rather than built into it, as in these experiments.
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- How silence affects the brain
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