"In a noisy café, I find that if I close my eyes, I can hear the person across from me more clearly. I can even speak better. Not because my hearing improves, but because vision stops competing for the same interpretive space. The sound doesn't get stronger. It just gets room to matter. We tend to assume that the brain works best when it combines everything it senses, layering sight, sound, movement, and context into a single stream."
"These benefits tend to show up when multiple sensory signals are redundant-when they point to the same answer and arrive in a way the brain can easily coordinate. In neuroscience, this is often described as reliability-based integration or cue weighting: the brain gives more influence to the signal that's most useful for the task at hand. When cues agree, combining them reduces uncertainty."
The brain uses multisensory integration selectively rather than by default. Integration improves detection and localization when multiple cues are redundant and can be reliably coordinated. When cues conflict or compete, combining them can reduce precision and soften perception rather than clarify it. Some people, including many autistic and ADHD individuals, prioritize one signal to maintain orientation and reduce cognitive load. Simple actions, like closing the eyes in a noisy café, can free interpretive space for a more relevant modality. The brain applies reliability-based weighting, favoring the most useful signal for the current task.
Read at Psychology Today
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