Multi-sense Inflow Registers: Hearing through the Skin
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Scientists have discovered evidence that human hearing is in part dependent on tactile cues that come not from audible sounds, but from pressure fluctuations and air-particle displacement against skin around the ear.
The BBC reports on the findings as follows:
In the latest study, researchers at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver wanted to look at whether tactile sensations also affected how sounds are heard.
They compared sounds which when spoken are accompanied by a small inaudible breath of air, such as “pa” and “ta” with sounds which do not such as “ba” and “da”.
At the same time, participants were given – or not – a small puff of air to the back of the hand or the neck.
They found that “ba” and “da”, known as unaspirated sounds, were heard as the aspirated equivalents, “pa” and “ta”, when presented alongside the puff of air.
The research is new evidence that each of the senses depends in some way on information fed in from other senses to build a complete picture of the information it is focused on detecting. So while the eyes help us hear by giving us visual cues, and our sense of taste is dependent in part on our sense of smell, touch may play a role in how we hear and whether we can make sense of specific environmental cues.
The discovery, if verified in studies of common human interaction, could significantly improve the methods used to compensate for hearing loss, and build better hearing aids. It could also give us an entirely new and far more complex understanding of what the senses do and how they do it.
Pranav Mistry, inventor of the SixthSense physical-to-computation convergence technology, told the TED India conference earlier this month that he is often told his invention could lend itself to a “FifthSense” product that helps to compensate for or restore a diminished sense capacity, as with the hard of hearing or the blind.
What innovations are showing us the multiple and interdependent quality of human sensation? And what new technologies are allowing us to take advantage of that new knowledge to improve treatment, recovery and replacement of sensory ability?
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