Our brains may process silence and sounds the same way.

The article focuses on recent experiments investigating whether humans can perceptually experience silence as an auditory input rather than merely infer its presence. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University used auditory illusions to demonstrate that people perceive continuous silences as longer than discrete silences, similar to how they perceive continuous sounds, suggesting that the brain processes silence and sound through comparable mechanisms. Philosophers and psychologists involved in the study highlight the significance of perceiving absences for survival and cognitive function, while noting individual differences in experiencing silence. The research team plans to extend their inquiry into how the brain perceives absences in other sensory modalities, such as vision and touch.