The sounds of silent movies

[Lithos]

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080805/full/news.2008.1014.html?s=news_rss

Flickering images can trigger perception of sound.

Jim Schnabel

People with synaesthesia can’t help but get two sensory perceptions for the price of one. Some perceive colours when they hear words or musical notes, or read numbers; rarer individuals can even get tastes from shapes.
dotsMoving dots give some people the sensation of a whooshing sound.SAENZ/KOCK/CALTECH

Neuroscientists have now reported1 another variant, in which flashes and moving images trigger the perception of sounds. The finding could help to identify the precise neural causes of the phenomenon, reportedly experienced by at least one in every hundred people, and suggests that at least some types of synaesthesia are closely related to ordinary perception.

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The brain is an amazing thing.

[LSparkle]

1. Sidebar: "Synesthesia" (sic) by Peter Himmelman is one of my favorite albums

And the title had me running for my dictionary. (Thank you,
Peter H.!)