This is indicated by a team of researchers from University College London (UCL) in a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience , in which, in essence, they suggest that hearing and sight share some neural mechanisms. To determine this, they monitored in real time the areas of the brain that were activated in a group of volunteers when they were asked to carry out a task in which they had to use their visual capacity more . In this way, they observed that at those moments their response to sound was significantly reduced.
“When it was a particularly demanding test, many could not detect the sound stimuli even though they were perfectly audible in other circumstances”, explains Maria Chait, one of the co-authors of the work, from the Ear Institute of the aforementioned British institution. “The tests we carry out show that sometimes people not only ignore or filter sounds , but do not even listen to them,” emphasizes this expert in cognitive neuroscience.
Although scientists have known about the existence of this phenomenon for a long time, the magnetoencephalography study carried out by the UCL scientists has revealed that it originates in the first stages of the auditory process. “We encounter these types of situations every day,” says Nilli Lavie, another of the signatories of the essay. According to this UCL professor, “this type of deafness can occur when, for example, we address someone who is very focused on a book or a video game and does not respond to us. This does not mean that they are ignoring us.
It could simply be that he has not heard us. “The same thing happens when we are reading something on the mobile phone while waiting at a stop for the bus to arrive or crossing a road.” In that case, we probably will not even hear how vehicles are approaching. We may perceive something very noisy, like the sirens of an ambulance, but not the engine of the car that passes right at that moment, “ says Lavie.
