A curious auditory illusion has taken over the users of the World Wide Web. True, not all of us, as it turned out, are capable of experiencing its effect on ourselves. Take a look at the animation below, which comically depicts two power line pylons with a third jumping between them, using the wires as a rope. If you, continuously looking at this animation, hear at certain moments the same sound, which in fact is not there, then you are definitely one of those lucky ones.
A huge number of regulars on the Internet claim that they clearly hear a blow in their heads whenever a jumping power line pole falls to the ground. And this is despite the fact that the audio track is completely absent here. Dr. Lisa DeBruin, a psychologist at the University of Glasgow, posted this recurring short cartoon on Twitter to see how users react to the illusion. More than 15 thousand people took part in the survey, 75% of whom reported that they perfectly hear the mysterious sound of a blow, which in reality does not exist.
Some explanations for sound and visual illusions
Dr. Debruin suggests that the so-called acoustic reflex of the ears is to blame. This protective mechanism was developed by nature in order to protect human hearing from loud noise. In this case, no noise is heard after the power transmission line has landed, but our ears still resonate in anticipation. Our eyes behave in a similar way when we watch 3D films in the cinema. They automatically close if something flies in the frame directly towards the viewer, although in reality there is no real threat.
There is another, even more daring theory. According to her, a person does not live in the real, but in the illusory world of his ideas about him. That is, he sees and hears (for the sake of simplicity, we will not talk about other feelings for now) only what he knows well, relying on his previous experience. In this case, the human brain knows very well that such a bulky support, falling to the ground, should make a loud sound - and therefore he hears it. A person sees green grass, white snow and blue sky in advance, because he knows that they should be like this, and so on. It turns out that our feelings constantly deceive us. And this auditory illusion perfectly proves it …
Daniil Myslinsky