According to a paper published in the Journal of the National Academy of Sciences on the 10th, a research team composed of philosophers and psychologists at Johns Hopkins University said that silence can actually be "heard". ▲ Image source: Researchers on the Science website used a series of sound illusions to indicate that the brain's perception of silence is roughly the same as that of sound. Although this study did not delve into the specific ways in which the brain processes silence, the results indicate that silence is a "sound" rather than just a gap between noise. To understand people's response to complete silence and whether they can truly perceive it, rather than just inferring its existence, the research team observed participants' reactions and auditory illusions to a series of auditory stimuli. In the first illusion known as' a coherent sound sounds longer ', participants were asked if they believe that a continuous tone is longer or shorter than two separate sounds separated by a brief' silence 'gap. In fact, the sum of two intervals of sound is the same as the duration of a continuous sound. However, participants generally believe that a long 'beep' sound appears to be longer than two short 'beeps'. Conversely, the illusion of using silence instead of sound is the same: people believe that a Longue durée of "silence" is longer than two short periods of "silence". Another illusion is called 'strange silence', where participants immerse themselves in the sound scene of playing two different sounds simultaneously (high organ and low engine rumbling). There were four times of 'silence' in the middle, where the organ stopped sounding and participants could only hear the sound of the engine. The fifth time, the engine was turned off and the organ continued to play. As a result, participants mistakenly believed that only the fifth organ performance had a longer 'silence' time. Researchers say that these 'silences' create illusions among people. This indicates that silence is not a lack of sound, but something that people actively perceive as if they were dealing with noise. In summary, these findings suggest that people's perception of silence is similar to that of sound, and the brain may use similar mechanisms to process sound and silence. (New News Agency)