New study shows visual input supports hearing, especially in noisy settings. Chatting with a friend in a noisy restaurant? New research says you’re probably not doing yourself any favors if you close your eyes to hear them better. A new study shows it may actually be easier to pick important sounds out from noise when our eyes are open. This might be because our brains filter out too much when our eyes are shut, including sounds we want to hear. Source: Andrea Piacquadio / Pexels When you’re struggling to make out the sound of someone’s voice in a crowded restaurant or bar, do you ever shut your eyes to hear them better?published this month in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America debunks the misconception that removing visual distractions will help you pick out sounds you’re straining to hear, especially in noisy environments like restaurants. The research team asked study participants to listen to the sounds of birds, trains, drums, keyboards, and canoe paddles through headphones while low noise played in the background. They were told to adjust the volume of each sound until it was just audible above the noise.Looking at a blank screen.Looking at a video that matched the sound they were hearing.With their eyes open, even if they were looking only at a blank screen, they could discern sounds an average of 1.32 dB quieter than they could with their eyes shut. Relevant visual information improved their performance even more. Viewing a related photo helped them pick out the sound they were hearing at volumes 2.92 dB lower. A sound-matched video? 4.30 dB lower. “Contrary to popular belief, closing one’s eyes actually impairs the ability to detect these sounds,”, Associate Professor at the Institute of Vibration, Shock, and Noise at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. “Conversely, seeing a dynamic video corresponding to the sound significantly improves hearing sensitivity.” Data on participants’ brain activity during the tests offered a hint as to why this might be the case. Electroencephalography showed that closing their eyes shifted participants’ brains into a state calledThis increased filtering could be helpful if it screened out only background noise, but it likely muffles sounds we’re trying to hear, too. “In a noisy soundscape, the brain needs to actively separate the signal from the background,” says Huang. In cases like these, visual information can assist by showing where a sound is coming from or what may be making it. If you’re having a conversation with someone at a restaurant, for instance, the way their mouths move as they speak can give you critical context to help piece together what they’re saying – even when background noises like ambient music, clinking glasses, and scraping chairs obscure some of the actual sounds of their voice. This is also why associations that represent the deaf and hard of hearing communities recommend that people face forward and keep their mouths uncovered when speaking to someone with hearing loss. When a person can see your mouth, they have extra information to fill in the gaps in any speech sounds they might be missing.published in 2020 showed that, even in a quiet room, closing your eyes doesn’t necessarily improve your hearing performance.to one of two alternating strings of spoken numbers, closing their eyes increased the alpha oscillations in their brains, a marker of auditory attention. They didn’t actually perform any better at picking out the sounds, though, than when they had their eyes open.Share this post