{"id":664326,"date":"2026-03-18T11:49:24","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T11:49:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/664326\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T11:49:24","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T11:49:24","slug":"closing-your-eyes-could-muffle-your-hearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/664326\/","title":{"rendered":"Closing Your Eyes Could Muffle Your Hearing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Summary: <\/strong>It\u2019s a common reflex: to hear a faint sound better, we squeeze our eyes shut. However, new research suggests this strategy actually backfires in noisy environments.<\/p>\n<p>By monitoring brain activity via EEG, researchers discovered that closing your eyes triggers a state of \u201cneural criticality\u201d that causes the brain to over-filter sound, accidentally silencing the very thing you are trying to hear.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Key Facts<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>The Noise Paradox:<\/strong> While closing your eyes may help in a dead-silent room, it impairs your ability to detect signals amid background noise (like a crowded cafe or a busy street).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Neural Criticality:<\/strong> Closing the eyes shifts the brain into an internal focus that aggressively filters all incoming data. This \u201cover-filtering\u201d suppresses both the background noise and the target sound.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Visual Anchor:<\/strong> Seeing a <strong>dynamic video<\/strong> that matches the sound significantly boosts hearing sensitivity. Visual engagement acts as an \u201canchor,\u201d helping the auditory system stay locked onto the external world.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Selective Attention vs. Multisensory Integration:<\/strong> The boost isn\u2019t just about having eyes open; the brain performs best when visual and audio information are synchronized (e.g., seeing a mouth move while hearing a voice).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Experimental Design:<\/strong> Volunteers were tested under four conditions: eyes closed, eyes open (blank screen), looking at a still photo, and watching a matching video.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong>AIP<\/p>\n<p><strong>Most people will close their eyes when trying to concentrate on a faint sound. Many of us have been told that keeping our eyes closed helps us hear better \u2014 that it frees up our brains\u2019 processing abilities and increases our auditory sensitivity. However, that strategy may sometimes backfire, particularly in environments with a lot of loud background noise.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In JASA, published on behalf of the Acoustical Society of America by AIP Publishing, researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University tested whether a person closing their eyes can really hear better in noisy environments.<\/p>\n<p>  <img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/eyes-closed-hearing-neuroscience.jpg\" alt=\"This shows a woman with her eyes closed and sound waves.\"  \/> This study demonstrates that visual engagement prevents the brain from entering a state of \u201cneural criticality,\u201d ensuring that the auditory system remains receptive to external signals rather than over-filtering them. Credit: Neuroscience News<\/p>\n<p>To test this, volunteers listened to a collection of sounds through headphones amid background noise. Then, the volunteers adjusted the volume of the sounds until they could barely make them out over the background noise.<\/p>\n<p>This test was conducted first with eyes closed, then with eyes open but looking at only a blank screen, then looking at a still picture corresponding to the sound, and finally, looking at a video matching up with the sound they were trying to hear.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe found that, contrary to popular belief, closing one\u2019s eyes actually impairs the ability to detect these sounds,\u201d said author Yu Huang. \u201cConversely, seeing a dynamic video corresponding to the sound significantly improves hearing sensitivity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To find an explanation for this result, the researchers attached electroencephalography (EEG) devices to the participants to monitor their brain activity. They determined that closing the eyes puts a participant\u2019s brain in a state of neural criticality, which more aggressively filters noises and quiet sounds, including the target sounds those participants were trying to detect.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn a noisy soundscape, the brain needs to actively separate the signal from the background,\u201d said Huang.<\/p>\n<p> \u201cWe found that the internal focus promoted by eye closure actually works against you in this context, leading to over-filtering, whereas visual engagement helps anchor the auditory system to the external world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The authors emphasize that this result is unique to noisy environments. With a calmer background, the conventional strategy of keeping their eyes closed likely does help people detect faint sounds. But because so much of our lives are spent surrounded by noise, it might be better to face the world with eyes wide open.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers plan to continue their work exploring the relationship between vision and hearing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSpecifically, we want to test incongruent pairings \u2014 for example, what happens if you hear a drum but see a bird?\u201d said Huang.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDoes the visual boost come from simply having the eyes open and processing more visual information, or does the brain require the visual and audio information to match perfectly? Understanding this distinction will help us separate the general effects of attention from the specific benefits of multisensory integration.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Key Questions Answered:<strong class=\"schema-faq-question\">Q: I\u2019ve always been told that closing my eyes \u201cfrees up\u201d brain power for my ears. Was that a lie?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"schema-faq-answer\"><strong>A:<\/strong> Not entirely, but it\u2019s context-dependent. In a quiet room, it works. But in a noisy environment, your brain needs to actively separate the \u201csignal\u201d from the \u201cnoise.\u201d Closing your eyes makes your brain retreat inward, causing it to \u201cdim the lights\u201d on all external sensory input, which actually makes the target sound harder to catch.<\/p>\n<p><strong class=\"schema-faq-question\">Q: Does it have to be a video, or does just looking around help?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"schema-faq-answer\"><strong>A:<\/strong> Simply having your eyes open helps prevent the brain from falling into that \u201cover-filtering\u201d state. However, the researchers found that a <strong>matching video<\/strong> provides the biggest boost. Your brain uses the visual timing (like seeing a drum stick hit) to \u201cpredict\u201d exactly when the sound will happen, making it much easier to pick out.<\/p>\n<p><strong class=\"schema-faq-question\">Q: What does \u201cneural criticality\u201d actually mean for my focus?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"schema-faq-answer\"><strong>A:<\/strong> Think of it as your brain\u2019s \u201csquelch\u201d setting on a radio. When your eyes are closed, the brain turns up the squelch so high that it blocks out everything but the loudest signals. By keeping your eyes open, you keep that filter \u201copen\u201d enough to let the subtle sounds through.<\/p>\n<p>Editorial Notes:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"background-color:#ffffe8\" class=\"wp-block-list has-background\">\n<li>This article was edited by a Neuroscience News editor.<\/li>\n<li>Journal paper reviewed in full.<\/li>\n<li>Additional context added by our staff.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>About this auditory and visual neuroscience research news<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-background\" style=\"background-color:#ffffe8\"><strong>Author: <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/neurosciencenews.com\/cdn-cgi\/l\/email-protection#fb969e9f929abb9a928bd594899c\" type=\"mailto\" id=\"mailto:media@aip.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Hannah Daniel<\/a><br \/><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/aip.org\" type=\"link\" id=\"https:\/\/aip.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">AIP<\/a><br \/><strong>Contact: <\/strong>Hannah Daniel \u2013 AIP<br \/><strong>Image: <\/strong>The image is credited to Neuroscience News<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-background\" style=\"background-color:#ffffe8\"><strong>Original Research: <\/strong>Open access.<br \/>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1121\/10.0042380\" type=\"link\" id=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1121\/10.0042380\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Visual engagement modulates cortical criticality and auditory target detection thresholds in noisy soundscapes<\/a>\u201d by Ke Ni, Yu Huang, Yi Wei, and Xu Zhang. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America<br \/><strong>DOI:10.1121\/10.0042380<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Abstract<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Visual engagement modulates cortical criticality and auditory target detection thresholds in noisy soundscapes<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The widely held assumption that closing eyes enhances auditory sensitivity has been supported by auditory attention experiments. However, the visual effects on auditory thresholds of detecting target sounds masked by noise remain unexplored.<\/p>\n<p>We investigated the participants\u2019 detection thresholds (n\u2009=\u200925) of target sounds (canoe paddle, drum, lark chirping, train, and keyboard) masked by 70\u2009dB(A) pink noise under four visual conditions (eyes closed, eyes open with blank board, static visual stimulation, and dynamic visual stimulation).<\/p>\n<p>Taking blank visual stimulation as the baseline, eye closure elevated detection thresholds by 1.32\u2009dB on average, whereas dynamic and static relevant visual stimulation lowered them by 2.98 and 1.60\u2009dB, respectively, contrary to conventional belief.<\/p>\n<p>Electroencephalogram recordings (n\u2009=\u200927) demonstrated avalanche critical index reduction of 22.3%\u201345.2% across five auditory stimuli under eye closure compared with blank stimulation, revealing that non-visual states preferentially stabilize neural dynamics near critical states.<\/p>\n<p>We propose a unified auditory-cortical framework based on the brain dynamics theory to explain both the enhanced auditory target detection during visual engagement in noisy environments and optimized auditory segregation via visual disengagement in quiet settings, advancing our understanding of visual effects on auditory perception in complex noisy soundscapes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Summary: It\u2019s a common reflex: to hear a faint sound better, we squeeze our eyes shut. However, new&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":664327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[11],"tags":[281079,145046,281080,210,281081,281082,831,281083,67,132,68,64340],"class_list":["post-664326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-aip","tag-auditory-neuroscience","tag-auditory-sensitivity","tag-health","tag-multisensory-integration","tag-neural-criticality","tag-neuroscience","tag-selective-attention","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-visual-neuroscience"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116250028678987834","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}