A SILENT animation that tricks the brain into “hearing” sound has caused a stir on TikTok.
The short clip shows a power pole jumping over power lines like a jump rope, causing the screen to “shake” each time it falls.
Some people report hearing the sound of the pole hitting the ground: a bang or an explosion.
But the sound doesn’t really exist and is actually caused by a strange auditory illusion, according to experts.
The cryptic GIF has been around for years, but it became popular again earlier this year after it was posted on TikTok.
User Paranormal Princess shared it with her 2.5 million followers on May 25.
“This is so amazing,” he says in the clip, which has garnered more than 60,000 views. “You’ll make you hear things that don’t really exist.”
An illusion created by a Twitter user @YoSoyFelizToastIt first went viral in 2017 after a psychology expert from the University of Glasgow shared it.
dr. Lisa DeBruine tweeted the animation and asked, “Does anyone with visual perception know why you can hear this gif?”
He created a poll asking his followers if they heard the sound while watching the animation.
Seventy-five percent, around 15,000 respondents, claimed to have heard a “thud.”
Fourteen percent of those surveyed, just under 3,000 in all, said they didn’t hear any sounds.
And 11% of the 20,000 respondents said they heard “something else.”
Experts believe that the “sound” is imagined by the brain because it expects a loud sound to accompany the sight of a crash.
dr. Gustav Khun, a psychologist and expert in human perception at Goldsmiths University, London, told MailOnline in 2017: “Perception is not an exact science, and in most cases our brains make informed guesses.
“We use past experience and expectations to judge what the world is really like, based on the information provided by our senses.
“This illusion works because you’ve learned that when larger objects hit the ground, they make a thumping sound.
“Some viewers will actually hear the sound, simply because that’s what they expect to happen.”
Professor Fiona Macpherson, an Illusion Index expert from the University of Glasgow, added: “Expectation is what makes some people hear explosions.
“There is a cross-modal expectation effect (meaning it involves more than one sense, such as sight and hearing) in the bar-hopping GIF.
“What people see affects what they seem to hear.”
Optical illusions are often just for fun, but they also have real value to scientists.
Brain puzzles help researchers shed light on the inner workings of the mind and how it reacts to the environment.
Speaking to The Sun earlier this month, Dr Kuhn explained that illusions are important to our understanding of the brain.
“We tend to take perception for granted and rarely think about the hard work that underpins everyday tasks, like seeing a cup of coffee in front of us,” he said.
“Visual illusions highlight misperceptions and provide important information about the hidden neural processes that allow us to see the world around us.”
It follows the release of a spooky illusion earlier this month that made the viewer feel like they were falling into a black hole.
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Categories: Optical Illusion
Source: HIS Education