Your skin can hear too!

The study’s findings suggest that people also use the tactile sensory information--like the inaudible puffs of air produced alongside certain sounds--to decipher what they hear along with the other senses.

"[That's] very different from the more traditional ideas, based on the fact that we have eyes so we think of ourselves as seeing visible information, and we have ears so we think of ourselves as hearing auditory information. That's a little bit misleading," study researcher Bryan Gick of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver said.

"A more likely explanation is that we have brains that perceive rather than we have eyes that see and ears that hear."

Study details
To find out whether tactile sensations affect how people hear the speech, researchers based at the University of Columbia, Vancouver carried out a study on 66 participants divided in three groups of 22 each.

One group was made to hear the syllables with an air puff blown onto their hand, the other group had air puff blown onto their neck and the third group was the control group.

Researchers primarily concentrated on four syllables, “pa”, “ta”, “ba” or “da”. Of these, “pa”, “ta” are aspirated sounds (a word with the sound 'h') and “ba” or “da” are the non-aspirated sounds.

All the participants were blindfolded and made to listen to recordings of a male voice speaking the four syllables. They had to press a button to indicate which sound did they hear.

Surprisingly, the participants were found to hear “ba” or “da”, known as the non-aspirated sounds as “pa” or “ta”, known as the aspirated sounds, researchers said. However, the control group did not make such incorrect perceptions.

Gick said the study shows that "perceivers integrate event-relevant tactile information in auditory perception in much the same way as they do visual perception."

Study may improve hearing aids
Researchers are hopeful that the findings of the study may help devise potential treatments for the hearing-impaired in the near future.

"If further research can show the same effect is observed when listening to everyday conversation in the 'real' world, then it could help improve hearing aids," they said.

Funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada and the National Institutes of Health, the study appears in the journal Nature.