评论
打印
So, there's a thing happening on the internet that you might have seen: viral gifs—or gifs, no one's decided for sure yet—that seem to have a sound.
你可能已经看到互联网上正在发生的事了：病毒式动图，似乎还有声音，但还没有人确定此事。
They're silent, like all gifs, but if you're one of the many people that experience a phenomenon known as vEAR, you might have heard them.
它们像其他所有动图一样都是无声的，但如果你像许多经历过称为vEAR现象的人一样，你可能会听到过它们的声音。
vEAR stands for Visually Evoked Auditory Response.
vEAR代表视觉诱发听觉反应。
It's only recently been identified, in a paper published in 2017.
这只是最近才被发现的，发表在2017年的一篇论文中。
Though initially vEAR flew under the radar, it got launched into the spotlight in December of 2017 when a gif of a bouncing electrical tower went viral on Twitter.
尽管最初vEAR无人问津，但在2017年12月，一个跳动的电子塔动图在Twitter上疯传时，它就成为了人们的关注焦点。
We'll stick it in the description for you to see.
我们会把它贴在描述部分让你们看看。
According to the highly unscientific twitter poll alongside said tweet, a majority of respondents perceived sound from the gif as the tower hit the floor.
根据Twitter上一项不太严谨的民意调查，大多数受访者在那个塔落地时都能感觉到来自动图的声音。
That's a pretty sizeable number.
人数相当多。
Of course, there's always the possibility that a lot of people were just going along to feel included—but then again, there's whole subreddits devoted to noisy gifs.
当然，总有很多人喜欢随大流，但是话说回来，有一些专门用于吵闹的动图浏览子板。
Even so, that tweet caught the eye of a whole lot of psychology researchers, who promptly got really excited.
即便如此，这条tweet还是引起了许多心理学研究者的注意，他们很快就变得超兴奋。
Scientists from around the world started weighing in on possible solutions.
来自世界各地的科学家开始考虑可能的解决方案。
One particular scientist from City, University of London spotted the tweet, and immediately thought it was a great real world example of work on
伦敦大学城市分校的一位科学家看到了这条tweet，立刻认为这是一个现实世界很棒的研究实例。
vEAR published by his lab only a few months prior.
就在几个月前，他的实验室发表了有关vEAR的研究。
In that 2017 paper, published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, the researchers looked at sensations of sound that could be evoked by flashes of light.
在那篇刊登于《意识与认知》期刊上的2017年的论文中，研究人员考察了光的闪现可以唤起的声音感觉。
When asked if the presentation of flashes were accompanied by a sound, 22% of their participants said yes.
当被问及闪光灯是否伴有声音时，22%的参与者回答为是。
And then, in order to confirm those reports of perceiving sound, investigators also tested participants on a more objective measure they called 'visual morse codes'.
然后，为了确认那些感知声音的报告，研究人员还对参与者进行了更为客观的测试，他们称之为“视觉莫尔斯电码”。
In this study, a white disk presented on a black background turned on and off in particular morse-like patterns.
在这项研究中，一个白色磁盘呈现在黑色背景上，在特定的莫尔斯模式下打开或关闭。
The participants that reported hearing the flashes were significantly better at identifying whether pairs of morse code flashes were the same than those who were unable to hear flashes.
报告听到闪光的受试者与听不到闪光的受试者相比，在辨别一对摩尔斯电码闪光是否相同方面有着明显的优势。
Those that heard the stimuli seemed to be turning the visuals into auditory information, which stores timing way better than visual information does.
那些听到刺激的人似乎正把视觉信息转化为听觉信息，这比视觉信息能够更好地存储时间。
Kind of like an audio cheat sheet that other participants just didn't have access to.
有点像其他参与者无法访问的音频备忘表。
Harnessing the power of the twitter storm, these researchers started talking to news outlets about their theory.
利用Twitter风暴的力量，这些研究人员开始向新闻媒体谈论他们的理论。
And, at the end of articles interviewing them, many outlets provided a link to the researchers' new study investigating the phenomenon.
而且，在采访他们的文章的最后，许多渠道提供了一个链接，可以查看研究人员调查这一现象的新研究。
All in all, they got over 4000 responses from around the world about just how people experienced the supposed sounds these gifs were making.
总之，他们收到了来自世界各地的4000多份关于人们如何体验这些动图发出的声音的回复。
The data showed that videos depicting situations with a lot of ‘movement energy', or predicted loud sounds, like a car crash, were most likely to trigger vEAR.
数据显示，描述具有大量“运动能量”或预知的响亮声音（如车祸）情况的视频，最有可能触发vEAR。
And, though they didn't have tests good enough to measure it directly, the researchers suggested that vEAR may be a kind of synesthesia.
而且，尽管他们没有足够好的测试来直接测量，研究人员认为vEAR可能是一种联觉。
Synesthesia is a crossing over of senses.
联觉是感官的交叉。
When one sensory modality like hearing is stimulated, those with synesthesia might perceive something in a different, unstimulated sensory modality.
当一种感觉形态如听觉受到刺激时，那些有联觉的人可能会感觉到一种不同的、不受刺激的感觉形态。
They might associate certain types of music automatically and reliably with certain colours or patterns, for example.
例如，他们可能会自动地、确实地将某些类型的音乐与某些颜色或图案联系起来。
There are a lot of different types of synesthesia.
有很多不同类型的联觉。
Everything from sensing particular personalities from numbers to perceiving different kinds of erotic stimulation with specific colours.
通过数字感知特定的个性，到用特定颜色感知不同类型的性刺激。
We don't have a single, unifying theory of what happens in the brain to cause synesthesia yet, but many scientists believe it's the product of an increased communication between sensory areas that don't usually talk.
我们还没有一个单一、统一的关于大脑中发生的事情导致联觉的理论，但是许多科学家认为，这是感觉区域之间交流增加的产物，而这些区域之间通常不交流。
That kind of sensory overlap certainly seems similar to vEAR, but whether or not vEAR is a kind of synesthesia is very much still an open question.
这种感觉上的重叠似乎与vEAR很相似，但vEAR是否是一种联觉仍然是一个悬而未决的问题。
If it is, it could be pretty big for synesthesia research.
如果是的话，这对于联觉研究来说相当重要。
The prevalence of vEAR seems to be much higher than that of other types of synesthesia.
vEAR的盛行率似乎比其他类型的联觉要高很多。
And the scientists involved believe that the prevalence of sensory crossover seen in vEAR might challenge the idea that synesthesia is anything other than a part of normal variations between people.
参与研究的科学家认为，在vEAR中发现的感觉交叉的盛行可能会挑战这种观点，即联觉是人与人之间正常变异以外的事物。
Maybe it's more normal to have senses cross over like this than we first thought.
也许这样的感觉比我们最初想象的更正常。
However, this isn't the only theory that could explain noisy gifs.
然而，这并不是唯一可以解释噪音动图的理论。
Some people have also highlighted the possibility that it's not actually a synesthesia-like process.
一些人也强调这实际上不是一个联觉过程的可能性。
It could be that visual brain areas are providing a sort of pre-emptive nudge to the ear to brace for expected sound.
这可能是因为大脑视觉区域对耳朵提供了一种先发制人的助推，以支撑预期的声音。
The acoustic reflex is a contraction of the stapedius muscle—a tiny muscle in上 the middle ear—that occurs in response to loud audio stimuli.
听觉反射是镫骨肌的收缩，它是中耳的一小块肌肉，对声音刺激做出反应。
That decreases the vibrational energy transmitted to the cochlea, the part of the inner ear that translates vibrations into neural firing.
这会降低传递给耳蜗的振动能量，耳蜗是内耳将振动转化为神经放电的部分。
The acoustic reflex is well documented in scientific literature, and can be used to gain insight into a lot of different hearing conditions.
声学反射在科学文献中有很好的记载，可以用来洞察许多不同的听力情境。
It also may produce an unexpected noise in the ear when it happens, since it pulls the inner ear into a slightly different shape.
当它发生时，也可能在耳朵里产生意想不到的噪音，因为它把内耳拉成一个稍微不同的形状。
So it might be that the acoustic reflex isn't just responding to the sound happening, but being prompted by the visuals predictive of a loud noise.
因此，声音反射可能不仅仅是对声音发生的反应，而是由声音发出的视觉预测引起的。
That would explain why research has found that videos showing situations predictive of loud noises trigger vEAR.
这就解释了为什么研究发现，视频中显示的情境中将出现吵闹的声音时会触发vEAR。
The brain might be pre-empting a sizeable sound and is letting the ear know, like, ‘hey, it's about to get real loud nearby!'.
大脑可能会先发制人地发出相当大的声音，然后让耳朵知道，比如说，“嘿，附近的声音会变得很吵！”
While we haven't nailed down the exact mechanisms behind vEAR, or why some people have it while others don't, research is still ongoing to find out.
虽然我们还没有确定vEAR背后的确切机制，或者为什么不是所有人都会出现这种情况，但研究仍在进行中，以便找出答案。
What is clear, though, is that we've only scratched the surface when it comes to decoding the complex ways our senses interact.
然而，很清楚地是，在解码我们感官交互的复杂方式时，我们只是触及到了表面。
That, and sometimes tweeting about weird stuff results in actually advancing science.
有时，Tweet上一些奇奇怪怪的东西会推动科学进步。
Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow Psych, and thank you to Kimberly for asking.
感谢收看这一集心理科学秀，感谢金伯利的提问。
Our patrons on Patreon get to vote and decide what burning scientific questions we address.
我们在Patreon上的赞助人有权投票决定我们要解决的科学问题。
So if you want a chance at getting your question answered, check out patreon.com/scishow.
如果你想有机会解答自己的疑问的话，请访问patreon.com/scishow。
