Can we really hear silence, or do we think so? Philosophers have debated this for centuries, but researchers at Johns Hopkins University are now thinking Answer Have it: People can hear silence the same way they hear sirens.

The debate is about whether people can literally hear silence. The alternative is that people just think it’s quiet because there’s no sound.

To study this, the researchers used what is called an auditory illusion. This is a sound your ear hears, but the brain interprets it differently. An optical illusion, but for the ear.

In this research, scientists used a well-known auditory illusion. In normal form, the voice part contains silences, which are followed by two short beeps and a somewhat longer beep. Although the short tones together last exactly the same time as the slightly longer stimulus, our brain thinks that the latter lasts longer.

In this case, the researchers emphasized not the sound, but rather its lack. Participants received part of the sound in which he heard a crowded restaurant.

In this piece they heard two shorter silences and one slightly longer silence. As with normal variation, the short silences and the longer silences were the same length, but the listeners thought the longer silences were longer. According to the researchers, this indicates that our brains can really hear silence, just like sound.