Does swapping stereo fool your eyes?
{ Multi-Sensory }
When you use this hands-on exhibit…you’ll wear a pair of headphones while you watch and listen to ringing bells. The headphones let you listen to the ringing bells from the perspective of a model head.
When you swap the audio over between your ears, work out which bell is ringing while your eyes are open and closed.
Do you notice how your vision influences where you think the sound is originating?
The next time you’re watching television, think about whether the soundtrack seems to be coming from the actors on the screen, or from the speakers mounted near the television, then close your eyes.
Can you only believe only what you hear or what you see?
It depends!
Your vision works out where things are (the location of something), while your hearing works out when things happen (the timing of something).
When you swap the audio in this exhibit, the audio and visual signals about which bell is ringing no longer match, but your vision dominates to work out the location of the ringing bell.
While vision and hearing tend to wrestle for prime position, a new hypothesis about ventriloquism reveals a more co-operative process for combining your vision and hearing.
A tiny round structure in your brain (inferior colliculus) may process both audio and visual signals preconsciously before they reach your cortex.
This means that visual and auditory information may get combined before the 'thinking part' of your brain can make sense of it.
As a result, your brain seems to associate the ventriloquist’s voice with the dummy’s moving mouth before you have a chance to consciously think about it.