Can you Hear Silence?

When your phone is silent and you are trying to watch videos, do you sometimes hear the sound that should have been playing? This is not an unusual phenomenon, and more people have actually been experiencing this since a recent twitter post went viral. This post included a GIF of pylons jumping rope, which was not the most unusual thing about this GIF. People started hearing the sound the pylons would be making if the GIF had audio. In the GIF below, can you hear the jumping pylons?

The name for this phenomenon is called a vEAR, and it stands for visual-evoked auditory response. What is a vEAR though? It is hearing caused by vision. How can you hear when there is no external noise? Well Chris Plack, a professor of audiology, says, "hearing does not require external noise; rather, it is 'having the experience of sound'"(Murphy). In this case there is no sound, but those who "hear" the jumping are experience sound so they are hearing the GIF. There are other cases of more advanced vEARing where people can hear the sound of flashing lights, or lights turning on and off. But why is this phenomenon happening?

The working theory to vEAR is that it is a "clever illusion caused by filling in"(Murphy). Our brains are expecting there to be a loud noise because from experience we know those pylons are huge, so our brain fills in the noise that is missing. This is similar to a optical illusions where our brain tricks us into seeing something that is not there. 

However, while it may be impossible to not hear this GIF anymore, hearing is a very selective sense and it is possible to differentiate different speakers from each other.

Raymond Dye is a professor of Psychology at Loyola University studying the auditory systems (Dye). His paper, "Laterailzation of Simulated Sources and Echoes Differing in Frequency Based on interaural Temporal Differences" delves deeper into how our ears differentiate from different speaks.  His experiment examined differentiating voices when the echo comes at different intervals and at different pitches. The results were that listeners could differentiate at 8ms-128ms and from 1500-Hz and up (Dye 2016). This means that human hearing is specialized to hear through at least one other person talking which makes it a very specialized sense. 

As a student studying neuroscience, I would be interested to find further research into vEAR and what brain regions are active when this is happening. I want to see if there is a correlation between the brain regions activated during hearing and the brain regions activated during vEAR. 

             Dye , Raymond. “Loyola University Chicago.” Raymond Dye: Psychology, Department Of, luc.edu/psychology/people/faculty/facultystaff/raymonddye/.

              Dye , Raymond H, et al. “Lateralization of Simulated Sources and Echoes Differing in Frequency Based on Interaural Temporal Differences.” The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 22 Dec. 2016, luc.app.box.com/v/neuroseminar/file/240928727550.

              Murphy, Heather. “Why We ‘Hear’ Some Silent GIFs.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Dec. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/12/08/science/why-we-hear-some-silent-gifs.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront.