Recently, University of Glasgow psychologist and researcher Lisa DeBruine created a mini-sensation on social media when she tweeted a playful animated GIF in which an electrical transmission tower appears to be jumping rope and asked, "Does anyone in visual perception know why you can hear this gif?" In a subsequent nonscientific poll of more than 315,000 Twitter users, 67 percent said they heard "a thudding sound" when they watched the animation, and another 3 percent said they heard "something else." Only 20 percent said they heard nothing at all.

　　最近，格拉斯哥大学心理学家兼研究员Lisa DeBruine在社交平台引发了一阵小轰动，她推特了一个搞笑的GIF动图，该图来自一个电子传输器产生的跳动线，并且问道：“在视觉感知中，谁能知道你为什么会听到这幅图?” 之后有315000推特用户进行了随机投票，67%网友都说自己看到这幅动图时听到了“砰的一声”，另外3%的网友说自己听到了其他声音，只有20%的网友说什么都没听到。

　　That’s seven out of 10 people who think they heard a sound accompanying a silent image. So what’s up with that?

　　七成的人认为他们在看图片的时候能听到声音，这是为什么呢?

　　The explanation, according to research, is that while we think of sound as being generated by the world around us, the experience of hearing sounds actually happens in the auditory cortex, which is located in the temporal lobe of the brain. When something actually occurs - for example, the honk of an automobile horn - that creates sound waves in the air, it causes our eardrums to vibrate, which transfers the information through a complex anatomical path. That eventually generates an electrical signal, which the auditory nerve carries to the auditory cortex, which processes the information and tells us that we’re hearing a loud noise.

　　根据某项研究，当我们想到某种物体在周围发出声音时，位于大脑的颞叶的听觉皮层就会真的发生听到这个声音的过程。当有声音真的产生时，例如汽车的喇叭声在空气中产生声波，引起耳膜的震动，再通过复杂的解剖学路径将信息传递。最终会产生一个电信号，听觉神经把信号传递到听觉皮层，听觉皮层将信息加工后，告诉我们听到了巨大的噪音。

　　Interestingly, though, in the absence of sound waves in the air, your brain will try to fill in the silence. In this study published in the Aug. 4, 2011 online edition of Nature Scientific Reports, researchers showed subjects hundreds of different still images, such as a man playing a saxophone or using a power saw, and also images that suggested silence, such as a woman sitting on a sofa reading a book. When the scientists measured the electrical activity in the subjects’ brains, they found that the brain’s auditory cortex was stimulated by pictures associated with sounds, in less than 200 milliseconds. Back in 2008, Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad spent time in an aneochoic chamber, a space designed to be super-quiet. He discovered that in the absence of actual sound, his brain soon began imagining sounds, ranging from the buzz of a swarm of bees to the vocals from a Fleetwood Mac song.

　　有趣的是，尽管空气中没有声波，你的大脑也会试图填补寂静。在2011年8月4日自然科学报道线上版中发布的一个研究中，研究人员展示了几百幅不同的无声画面，例如一个人正在吹奏萨克斯或者正在使用电锯，同时也有静态的图片比如一个女性正在沙发上看书。当科学家测量实验对象大脑的电流活动时，他们发现当看到与声音有关联的图片时，大脑的听觉皮层在不到200毫秒的时间里会受到刺激。回到2008年，Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad花时间待在一个被设计成绝对安静的无回声的房间。他发现在没有实际声音的环境里，他的大脑很快开始虚构声音，从一群蜜蜂的嗡嗡声到FM的流行歌曲。

　　In a study published in the March 2017 issue of Consciousness and Cognition, University College London researchers found that 21 percent of subjects reported being able to hear faint sounds when viewing flashes of light, a phenomenon known as visually-evoked auditory response.

　　发表在2017年3月的《意识与认知》期刊的一项研究，伦敦大学的研究者们发现，在注视闪烁的光源时，有21%的实验对象报告可以听到昏厥的声音，这一现象以视觉唤起听觉反应而被熟知。

　　Chris Fassnidge, the lead author of that study, joined in the Twitter fun by posting this animated GIF of Bamm Bamm from "The Flintstones" and asking, "Who hears this one?"

　　该研究的主要作者克里斯.法森里奇也加入了在Twitter上找寻乐趣的行列，他把《石头城》里的Bamm Bamm变成动画GIF，然后问：“谁能听到什么声音?”