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Research thousands of health terms, drugs, and diseases   Tuesday December 26 5:52 PM ET Vision Fooled by Hearing By Elizabeth Tracey NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Receiving multiple audible tones while being shown a single visual image fools the brain into thinking it has seen more than one image, according to researchers. ``Common thought has always been that vision dominates our perception of the world,'' Dr. Ladan Shams of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena told Reuters Health. ``We've also known that visual input could modify messages from other senses, such as touch or hearing. This research indicates that the hearing can also modify visual perception.'' Shams and colleagues tested eight study participants with a combination of audible tones and flashes appearing on a screen. When multiple tones were heard, the observers incorrectly reported seeing more than one flash. Even observers who knew there was only one flash reported perceiving more than one, according to the report published in the December 14th issue of Nature. ``What this means to us is that the illusion is robust, and that the interactions between perceptions are much more prevalent than we thought,'' Shams said. ``Although in this laboratory test we fooled the brain into thinking it saw more than one image, we believe that the interaction between systems such as vision and hearing is the brain's way of integrating more information to improve overall reliability.'' Shams indicated surprise that vision was as easily influenced as it appears in this test, since people have always been thought to rely on vision more than other senses, in contrast to some other animals which apparently rely on smell or hearing. ``Other research has shown that a large part of the brain is devoted to these dominant senses, and we've thought that perception was modular. Now it appears that the interactions are fundamental to processing stimuli,'' the researcher said. SOURCE: Nature 2000;408:788. Email this story - View most popular  |  Printer-friendly format Archived Stories by Date: Dec 25 Dec 23 Dec 22 Dec 21 Dec 20 Dec 19 Dec 18 Dec 15 Dec 14 Dec 13 Dec 12 Dec 11 Dec 08 Dec 07 Dec 06 Dec 05 Dec 04 Dec 02 Dec 01 Nov 30 Nov 29 Nov 28 Nov 27 News Resources Message Boards: Post and read messages about this story Requires a Yahoo! ID to post messages. Conversations: View | Start a live discussion Requires Yahoo! Messenger

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