http://mindhacks.com/2005/07/28/ipods-increase-likelihood-of-musical-hallucinations/ Neuroscience and psychology news and views. Fri, 24 May 2013 17:03:23 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://mindhacks.com/2005/07/28/ipods-increase-likelihood-of-musical-hallucinations/#comment-8284 Thu, 28 Jul 2005 22:34:52 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2005/07/28/ipods-increase-likelihood-of-musical-hallucinations/#comment-8284 This does raise a few questions:
- Why is the iPod mentioned? As a buzz word? Because people spend more time listening through headphones then in the cassette days? Because fourier-based encoding causes more halicunations? Because iPod headphones are so agressive?
- When is a song that is ringing in your head an hallucination?
I would like to read your view on this.
The article about Victor Aziz on “thisislondon” a bit suggestive. And look at those ads! But mp3s! Compare iPod prizes!
Listen to your iPod even if it’s off! It’s not a problem, it’s a feature!
About filling in the gaps in audio:
The fact that the brain fills in blanks is known to the people who made the mobile phones codecs. As packages of audio date are immediately played on arrival at the listener while the time the take to travel from one phone to another is uncertain, gaps occur. This would have been a problem, but if you fill in the gap with noise, the gap is unnoticed.
The ear is not passive at all. It is scanning all the time. Not only on a brainlevel, but also physically. Your ear helps moving the membrane in the cochlea, to find out if it’s guesses were correct. Noise is not as obstructive for this scanning process as silence is.
Thanks for the beautiful blog, BTW!

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