SAN DIEGO — Scientists have been working to understand how we sense the world around us. These findings will be presented at Neuroscience 2025, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and the world’s largest source of emerging news about brain science and health.
Senses are critical for processing the outside world. The nervous system sends signals to the brain, where they are interpreted and processed, creating our ability to see, hear, smell, taste, balance, and feel pain and touch. Neuroscientists are investigating key questions about how the brain processes certain sensory information, how sensory capabilities develop, and the mechanisms underlying sensory dysfunctions.
Today’s new findings show that:
- Whether a stroke on the sole of the foot feels like a tickle, a gentle touch, or a painful prod depends on its speed and force, and by looking at changes in heart rate, sweating, and breathing, we can predict whether the touch was experienced as ticklish. (Konstantina Kilteni, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour; Karolinska Institute)
- Humans experience speech illusions when the face and voice of talker don’t match. Researchers showed that a deep neural network also reported the illusion, suggesting that AI tools could be used to study human perception. (Michael Beauchamp, University of Pennsylvania)
- Recordings of brain activity in children watching movie clips showed that their auditory cortices had an emerging preference for speech over music as they developed, suggesting how the brain might separate speech from background noise. (Liberty Hamilton, University of California, Berkeley)
- Scientists used gene therapy to restore hearing in congenitally deaf mice. The animals’ brains developed an internal representation of sound within 48 hours — challenging the idea that lack of early sound experience limits hearing recovery. (Daniel Polley, Massachusetts Eye and Ear / Harvard Medical School)
"Everything we know about the world comes from our senses converting energy to signals that are interpreted in the brain,” said Benjamin A. Rowland, PhD, professor of translational neuroscience at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and moderator of the press conference. “It is essential for us to understand how these processes work to enhance their performance, rehabilitate disorders and build functional artificial systems with biological inspirations. The presentations highlight how cutting-edge technologies are being used to help us reach these goals.”
For complete access to Neuroscience 2025 in-person and online, request media credentials. This research was supported by national funding agencies including the National Institutes of Health and private funding organizations.
Sunday, November 16, 2025
9–10 a.m. PST
San Diego Convention Center, Room 15A, and online for registered media
Sensory Press Conference Summary
- These studies examined how brains process information such as touch and sound from the outside world.
- Three studies centered hearing (the speech illusion, sound distinction in the developing brain, and restoration of hearing); one studied touch (what constitutes tickling).
- Two of the studies worked with humans, one used a computer model, and one used a mouse model.
Characterizing and decoding tickle responses in humans: A multimodal approach
Konstantina Kilteni, konstantina.kilteni@ki.se, Abstract PSTR298.19
- Researchers explored what makes a touch feel ticklish and analyzed behavioral and physiological reactions across 36 subjects.
- Using a robotic device to deliver strokes to the sole of the foot, scientists demonstrated that a "ticklish" touch is one at a medium speed — not as slow as a gentle touch — and with relatively strong force, but not so strong as a painful prod.
- The researchers also demonstrated that it was possible to use facial expressions, voice, heart rate, breathing, and sweating to predict whether a participant experienced a touch as ticklish.
- The results suggest that ticklish touch has unique and measurable characteristics.
Mcgurk perception in 165 humans tested in-person and 165 artificial neural networks
Michael Beauchamp, Michael.Beauchamp@Pennmedicine.upenn.edu, Abstract PSTR173.14
- The McGurk effect is an audio-visual illusion in which watching a video of a speaker saying one syllable ("ga") while hearing an audio recording of a different syllable ("ba") produces the experience of a nonexistent third syllable, distinct from the other two ("da").
- Using a deep neural network called AVHuBERT that can transcribe audiovisual speed with 99% accuracy, researchers showed that it also reported the illusory “da” syllable.
- The results suggest that, despite differences from human brains, deep neural networks could be a useful model of human perception.
Direct brain recordings showing neural prioritization of speech over music in children
Liberty Hamilton, liberty.hamilton@berkeley.edu, Abstract PSTR222.12
- To pay attention in noisy environments, listeners must separate incoming streams of audio that often happen simultaneously. Researchers sought to understand how the brain processes competing sounds — such as speech and music — as it develops.
- Using intracranial brain recordings from 51 young people with epilepsy (aged 4–22) while they were passively listening to speech and music at the same time, the scientists found that as these individuals got older, parts of their auditory cortex showed an emerging preference for speech over music.
- These results suggest that the brain prioritizes speech over other sounds and may help improve learning environments.
Awakening normal cortical sound processing and perception in deaf adult mice lacking all developmental auditory experience
Daniel Polley, Daniel_Polley@meei.harvard.edu, Abstract PSTR280.04
- According to the "critical period" theory, sensory stimulation in early life is necessary for normal sensation and perception. The theory suggests people born with congenital hearing loss — lacking early auditory experience — would be limited in hearing recovery.
- Researchers tested this theory with a congenitally deaf mouse model. They restored hearing via cochlear gene therapy. Neural recordings from the auditory cortex showed that hearing emerged within 48 hours of gene therapy treatment, and receptive fields for different tones emerged within five days. After three weeks, the animals could detect basic sounds, discriminate between complex sounds, and respond to auditory stimuli at levels approaching normal hearing controls.
- The results show that the deaf adult brain can develop an internal representation of sound even without early experience, suggesting that the “critical period” may not permanently limit recovery.
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The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) is an organization of nearly 30,000 basic scientists and clinicians who study the brain and the nervous system