Can We Hear Through Our Skin Also?

Boston (DbTechNo) - According to researchers of a new study, we humans may actually be able to hear through our own skin.

This as one may guess is a very weird study finding as we all know that we use our ears to hear things.

The skin is very important, as it protects us from the outside elements, including the sun, which can actually harm our skin if we do not protect it.

For their study, researchers subjected participants to puffs of wind against their skin, at the same time playing syllables and asking the participants to repeat them.

Depending on the strength of wind against the skin of participants, the answers the researchers got varied greatly, meaning that the tactile touch of wind against skin, effected participant’s ability to hear.

“[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, told LiveScience.

Researchers state that their study finding could one day result in better hearing aids being developed for hearing-impaired people.

The study is published in the journal Nature.