SILENCE is defined as the lack of sound, and sounds are vibrations that can be perceived by the ear.
As such, it stands to reason that anything that is 'silent' cannot be heard.
However, despite silence and sound being polar opposites, scientists are suggesting that our brains process them the same way.
Is it true that silence can be heard?
Verdict:
TRUE
Hello darkness, my old friend.
It has been over half a century since Simon & Garfunkel sang about The Sound of Silence, and it turns out the song may have been prophetic in a way, as researchers have found that silence is discernible by the human ear.
That’s right, we can actually "hear" the absence of sound.
In a recent study published in July 2023, researchers tackled what they described as a "centuries-old philosophical debate between two camps: the perceptual view (we literally hear silence), and the cognitive view (we only judge or infer silence)."
They examined this by using well-known auditory illusions, but adapted so that silences substituted for sounds.
The results? It was found that the tweaked, silence-based illusions elicited the same brain responses as the original auditory illusions across all 1,000 participants.
This, the authors say, strongly suggests that silence is actually heard and not just a phenomenon that the brain infers within the context of other noises.
However, Chaz Firestone, a co-author of the study, stresses that "silence, whatever it is, is not a sound."
This simply shows that hearing is more than just sound.
Some food for thought for the next time you feel like you’re experiencing a deafening silence!
References:
1. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/we-can-hear-silence-like-a-sound-scientists-say-180982512/
2. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/10/science/silence-sound-hear.html
