Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1504731
olange Schwalbe in Vancouver meeting Miguel Araujo in person for the first time. They see each other every month on Zoom at The MPSE Board and committee meetings. Solange lives in South Lake Tahoe and Miguel and his family met up with Solange for lunch after her plane landed in Vancouver and she was waiting to board a cruise ship to the Alaskan inlets this past May. On the flip side, Miguel was in Los Angeles in June on a work-related trip and reached out to Eric Marks and Christina Horgan to meet up for lunch in Burbank. Afterward, they walked back to Eric's post facility, Transported Audio, for a first class personal tour. t turns out that Simon & Garfunkel were onto something when they released "The Sound of Silence" (https://youtu.be/4fWyzwo1xg0 ) in 1964. But before you get distracted and go listen to the hit (or perhaps cue up The Graduate), let us explain why. A team of philosophers and psychologists at Johns Hopkins University conducted a study (https:// www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas. 2301463120 ) to figure out if our brains process silence in the same way they process sound, finding the answer to be a resounding yes. "We typically think of our sense of hearing as being concerned with sounds. But silence, whatever it is, is not a sound— it's the absence of sound," lead author Rui Zhe Goh said in a press release (https:// hub.jhu.edu/2023/07/11/can-we-hear- silence/ ). "Surprisingly, what our work suggests is that nothing is also something you can hear." The researchers used auditory illusions to reach their conclusion, playing two audio tracks for participants: one with a long moment of silence and then another with two short moments of silence punctuated by soundscapes. They found that people thought the one silence was longer than two short ones, even though they were the same length when combined, indicating that we can hear silence. Listen to the Illusion (https://youtube/ncrosndufmc ) Reprinted with permission by Nice News. Copyright © 2023 Nice News. All rights reserved. Does Silence Have a Sound? Scientists Say Yes. Soundies Meeting Soundies I S Sandipkumar Patel/iStock Solange with Miguel and his wife Andy and their son Tiago (photo bombing from the back seat of the car). Vancouver, BC, Canada, May 14, 2023. L-R: Miguel, Eric and Christina. Burbank, California June 16, 2023 Get 10 free sounds from award-winners & top recordists prosoundeffects.com/mpse