Slashdot Mirror
How Seeing Can Trump Listening, Mapped In the Brain
cortex writes "University of Utah bioengineers discovered our understanding of language may depend more heavily on vision than previously thought: under the right conditions, what you see can override what you hear. In an article published in PLOS One, 'Seeing Is Believing: Neural Representations of Visual Stimuli in Human Auditory Cortex Correlate with Illusory Auditory Perceptions,' the authors showed that visual stimuli can influence neural signals in the auditory processing part of the brain and change what a person hears. In this study patients were shown videos of an auditory illusion called the McGurk Effect while electrical recordings were made from the surface of the cerebral cortex."
Ever happen to be looking for a street in an unknown area, and you end up turning down your radio? This actually increases your visual acuity slightly even though many may question your sanity when doing it. Many blind people have increased auditory capacity, and this has been known for a very long time. It doesn't seem all that far fetched that one (or more) of those senses could override the other. Maybe that meal that you hate tastes absolutely amazing...but looks so terrible that you taste it differently.
I think the Donald only listens to other right-wing conspiracy nutters
Why can't the woman shutup for 10 seconds so I can concentrate on the effect she keeps prattling on about? It makes it difficult to study when her voice is over top of the illusion half the time.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
After googling for the McGurk Effect and watching a bunch of videos I have concluded that I can't really sense this effect at all. I'll take their word that most people can.
Probably what is more interesting is some of the info on Wikipedia about the sorts of things that make the effect more or less pronounced. I'd be interested in the results for the average Slashdotter - I suspect that things like mild autism are much more common here.
And conversely, when an advertiser has to tell you the bad news about their product, the visuals crank up/switch to something compelling so you won't register the bad news.
I come here for the love
One picture, one thousand words, who'd a thunk it?
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HReySt8AMmI
I can't listen, either..
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Mostly the opposite. Too much data is more likely to obscure needed information, and much more likely to not add anything over jut enough data. Anyone who has operated in a command/information center knows that for optimal performance you want just enough of the right information flowing to the right people and no more.
There was an article a few days ago about software to create the illusion of eye contact with video calls. As some people pointed out, continuous eye contact is actually somewhat disconcerting. When I'm listening to someone, I tend to watch their lips, particularly in high background noise environments.
Have gnu, will travel.
How can he physically produce the "Baa" sound when his bottom lip is tucked behind his teeth? His lips don't press together when the illusion is supposed to make it sound like he's saying "Faa" instead. I think he's actually making two different sounds.
Isn't the "Baa" sound impossible to make without the lips pressing together? Isn't the "Faa" sound impossible to make without blowing on the lip-teeth connection with the top and bottom lips separate?
There was a supposedly entertaining example of this on one of the astronomy blogs a while back, but they got a takedown notice before I saw it. Changed what you heard in a music video, IIRC. Does anyone know where we can find that?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It reminds me of this:
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21583974-top-musicians-are-judged-much-their-movements-their-melodies
In short, people were bad at guessing who won the competition when they could only hear the music and not see the performers. Professional judges were just as bad as novices (worse when they could see the performance but just as bad when they could only hear it).
Interesting stuff.
THIS article finally confirms my suspicion that it is a normal response within some individuals to easily perceive light in an auditory fashion. Perhaps this is why mood lighting is so effective and disco balls were such a hit though they are essentially useless.
All though this explanation from some scientists defies this logic, I have been with other people in the pitch dark watching the lights at the same time and they did not hear the sounds I was experiencing and the sound was not at all as described in the article on Space. The sounds that happen to me are definitely like an electrical spark crackling not at all like applause!
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
Nice to see a new generation learning things I studied in school 20 years ago. No, this isn't news, but y'all are children so it's all good.
Oh sorry... I forgot that McGurk had access to brain-activity-detecting electrodes and pinpointed the parts of the brain that experienced his illusion. Oh wait, he didn't, did he. The summary isn't brilliant, but this is news... they've shown that the McGurk effect feeds into the auditory channel, rather than simply overriding the audio signal at one of the later, more specialised language-processing areas.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
They "discovered" that? I remember a demonstration of this in a phonetics class, which I took in like 2002. Though my guess is that it's only the summary that's wrong, and the researchers themselves didn't claim to "discover" anything, but were simply doing new neurological research on the effect, given that the summary itself mentions the McGurk effect. Quoth Wikipedia, "The McGurk effect is sometimes called the McGurk-MacDonald effect. It was first described in 1976 in a paper by Harry McGurk and John MacDonald entitled 'Hearing Lips and Seeing Voices'."