Do we only hear sounds? Or can we also hear silence? These questions are the subject of a centuries-old philosophical debate between two camps: the perceptual view (we literally hear silence), and the cognitive view (we only judge or infer silence). Here, we take an empirical approach to resolve this theoretical controversy. We show that silences can “substitute” for sounds in event-based auditory illusions.

I don’t have access to the full paper (I probably wouldn’t understand it anyway), but the idea that we can “hear” silence is pretty mind-blowing to me.