Even silent videos excite the listening brain

Have you ever peered through a window at a sight that, from your experiences, holds the expectations of making a certain sound, and causing, within you, a certain reaction for that matter. Kaspar Meyer, of the University of Southern California, and colleagues used a serious of tests to show that the human brain will react in the same way to a sight whether or not the expected sounds accompany it. After observing the brain activity of a few volunteers who looked at a series of video clips, including people playing violins, a dog howling and chainsaws cutting into trees, Meyers and his colleagues were then able to determine which of this clips other volunteers were watching based solely on their brain activity responses. This was possible because the tests showed patterns in brain activity among the test subjects based upon the particular clip in which they were watching.

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