For example, if you are in a noisy room, you will hear a conversation between 10 and 60% better if you see the faces of your colleagues while they speak to you, according to a study published today by the magazinePLoS ONE. Our brain uses visual information from the movement of other people’s faces and lips to help us interpret what we hear. “We all know how to read lips, even if we are not conscious,” explains Wei Ji Ma, co-author of the study. This is especially important if the sound quality is not very good.
According to Ma, their recent experiments have helped them understand howthe brain integrates sound and visual stimuli to reach a conclusion. “Imagine you are adetective“says the investigator.” You have two witnesses to a crime. One is very accurate and reliable, the other not so much. You take information from something and you weigh the credibility of both to know what happened. ”In a way, sound and lip reading work this way, adds the scientist.
According to Wei Ji Ma, a curious conclusion from this mechanism that our brain conflicts when we see afilm with dubbing, in which the actors do not pronounce the same words that we hear. Although this apparent contradiction also knows how to solve it successfully.
With the results obtained, Ma and his team have developed amathematical modelthat predicts the individual ability of each person to integrate visual and auditory information in any context.
