
One in five of us may 'hear' flashes of light - jonbaer
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jan/17/listen-with-your-eyes-one-in-five-of-us-may-hear-flashes-of-light-synaesthesia
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gilgoomesh
I think synaesthesia is the wrong interpretation of this phenomenon.

I hear flashes like that as a soft rush of blood around my eardrum. I'm pretty
sure it's just the "acoustic reflex" (the muscles in my middle ear tightening
in case there's a loud sound incoming). Obviously there isn't a loud noise
here but like an involuntary blink, my body doesn't know that.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_reflex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_reflex)

~~~
Houshalter
It's not blood but the vibrations of the tensor tympani muscle. I learned to
control it voluntarily and can make my ears rumble whenever I want. It's a
pretty useless talent. Many people hear it when yawning.

There was an HN post a few weeks ago about Mercedes putting something in their
car that activate the reflex just before an accident. To protect against
hearing loss from the loud crash of an accident.

~~~
maaaats
If it's the same thing I can do, it's very useful. I can "pop" my ears
voluntarily, which is nice when freediving.

~~~
steve-howard
I can pop my ears by plugging my nose and making a "k" or "g" sound. Comes in
handy since my Eustachian tubes are essentially useless.

~~~
maaaats
What I described above is called a BTV. This sounds like a Frenzel, which is
the one most experienced freedivers use.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ear_clearing](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ear_clearing)

~~~
dekhn
Huh, I thought this was the val salva maneuver.

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travisl12
I'm actually the opposite. In that I see flashes of light when I hear sounds
(when my eyes are closed in a dark place). Happens all the time when I'm
laying in bed before I fall asleep at night.

~~~
throw_away
Do you mean sounds that are real or imagined? Reading this article made me
look up this phenomenon I sometimes experience, and it turns out it's a
documented thing:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome)

~~~
nom
Thank you so much for the link! I've experienced it too and always wondered
what it's called. It happened multiple times, over a period of a couple weeks.
It always occured at the worst time - the moment where you actually fall
asleep. It's definitely related to the twitching many people experience during
this stage [0], as I thought.

It can be really intense: an extremely loud sound, a bright flash of light and
jerking of the neck muscles. It became stronger every time it happened - until
it suddenly went away completely.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk)

~~~
throw_away
In the past, I've also suffered from sleep paralysis, so it's interesting that
the two are possibly linked.

~~~
knz
I used to experience sleep paralysis as a teenager and it was terrifying until
I worked out how to end it (stay calm and focus on wiggling a toe).

It always left me wondering how many stories about alien abduction etc were
related to sleep paralysis. I read once that a feeling of being watched was
common with sleep paralysis.

~~~
stordoff
> I read once that a feeling of being watched was common with sleep paralysis.

I've only experienced a couple of times, but that was the most noticeable
thing about it. I knew about sleep paralysis before I first experienced, so it
didn't really concern me (as soon as I realised I was awake but unable to
move, I knew what it was and roughly what to expect), but glancing over to my
doorway and seeing a vague silhouette just standing there watching me is
somewhat disconcerting nonetheless.

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FreeFull
Another similar phenomenon is that bright light can cause a person to sneeze.
There have been a few times where it has happened to me too, but usually
bright light doesn't trigger sneezing for me.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photic_sneeze_reflex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photic_sneeze_reflex)

~~~
aleksei
Looking at light helps me sneeze when I feel I'm just about to sneeze but for
some reason won't. In most cases the light triggers the sneeze, and I'm not
left with the sensation of an un-sneezed sneeze.

I started doing this when I read about it somewhere, and I got the impression
it's universal. I haven't experienced lights causing unwarranted sneezing
though, but perhaps it's the same thing, only some are more sensitive than
others.

~~~
hfsktr
nope not universal.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photic_sneeze_reflex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photic_sneeze_reflex)

my entire family does it on my mom's side. when you tell it to someone who
doesn't do it they think you are crazy.

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teilo
I have always had this experience. I never stopped to consider that others
don't have it as well. Now I wonder how much this correlates to how people
process information. I tend to visualize abstract concepts in some fashion,
ever if I cannot describe what I am seeing.

~~~
teilo
Perhaps also relevant: I'm not much of a lip reader, but when I clearly can
tell what someone is saying, I have an auditory response. I hear the words.
Sometimes this is so strong that when viewing video, I have been fooled into
thinking that there was actual audio, when there was none.

I wonder if this is the auditory version of vision whereby the brain fills in
details that are not necessarily there.

~~~
nom
Check out this [0] video! The visual system plays a huge role in how you
process sounds - the brain uses all information it can get.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzo45hWXRWU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzo45hWXRWU)

edit: After watching the video three times I can influence which word I hear
just by thinking 'the right way'!

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flubert
Is anyone trying to correlate this effect with DNA (similar to how cilantro
tastes like soap to some). If a seeming large difference in basic sensory
processing can go relatively unnoticed for so long, I wonder what else could
be flying under the radar, so to speak.

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zitterbewegung
I have been experiencing this . I tried searching for terms related to
synthesia but couldn't find anything . I tried the test but I am in a car but
I believe I was able to perform the task. I agree that it is a faint sound but
also I know that it is a result of what I am seeing .

I hate seeing jarring animations on websites especially above the fold.

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linker3000
Yeah, happens to me if I look at flashing lights with a regular pattern - I
get a barely perceptible accompanying soundtrack in my head.

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jrickert
I discovered I had this many years ago. A gif someone had posted was making a
periodic noise as it looped that stopped if it was scrolled off the screen. It
inspired a fun video art project for me:
[https://joshrickert.com/blog/threshold/](https://joshrickert.com/blog/threshold/)

It's interesting that they point out that trained musicians exhibit the effect
more often. I wonder if psychedelic drug use would correlate to it as well,
since those drugs are known to cause an acute version of this effect. And
would the correlation to musicians hold up if we control for drug use?

~~~
userbinator
That might actually be the computer making the sound:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8862689](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8862689)

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BWStearns
I know it's not quite synesthesia, but I could always hear the boards coming
up when skating backwards even though I'm not sure of the mechanism. I wonder
how much preprocessing goes on before we interpret our senses (is hearing just
that good?/can I judge the distance to the opposite boards accurately enough
to sub in "hearing" them?/see the reaction from other players?/etc?).

edit: I was still kind of a shitty hockey player but I was never surprised by
the boards.

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tantalor
>a synaesthesia-like phenomenon

How is this different than synesthesia?

~~~
khedoros1
It _is_ synesthesia. The news is that it seems to be more common than
previously thought.

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cwmma
As somebody with synaesthesia this doesn't really sound related, my
synaesthesia is basically that there is something intrinsically mustard yellow
about the number 4 and something red about the letter k (and words that start
with k). That doesn't mean I see 4s as yellow or words that begin with k are
red in a book it just means when I think about them they have that color. This
on the other hand seems much more direct, almost more like the holywood
version of synaesthesia.

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foo101
Anyone took this test mentioned at the end of the article?

[https://cityss.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bKSkV69EJ6TKmKV](https://cityss.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bKSkV69EJ6TKmKV)

I did not experience "hearing motion" in any of the test videos. Try this out
and if you experience "hearing motion", please post here and let us know what
a certain video sounds like.

~~~
Twisol
I experienced "hearing motion" in most of them, although the more abstract
videos tended to bring it out most strongly. I seem to respond best to
periodic patterns involving changes in brightness -- the police lights
consistently gave an set of four... ehh, "thumps"... increasing in subjective
pitch.

It's really hard to describe what exactly it sounds like, because it's not
really sound that I'm perceiving. It's like the shadow of a sound that could
have been.

~~~
iwuglugihwhieug
exactly the same as me! and "shadow sounds" is the perfect term for it!

almost any motion involving acceleration generates shadow sounds, for example
watching people walking creates a wooop-wooo-wooop-wooo (rising-falling) sound

flashing lights (emergency services) is the most powerful, like you it's
"thumps" at different pitches timed exactly to the lights

I also get the same in reverse: when I listen to music I "see" moving shapes
in a dark space

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goodcanadian
This may explain why some people "hear" the aurora borealis (northern lights)
even though audible sound is clearly not being generated.

~~~
tejtm
Same for fireballs, I have heard _very_ experienced, thoroughly rational
amateur astronomers claim they "heard" a fireball when it is clearly at least
60 miles away and the sound waves can't arrive for another 7 minutes. We tried
looking for answers such as turbulent plasma propagating magnetic waves to be
picked up and retransmitted by nearby hunks of metal, now I can suggest to
them it is all in their head.

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xenihn
I can "hear" visual motion without any accompanying sound, e.g. animated GIFs.
I don't think it's that rare, though?

~~~
neom
Super amazing, what does it sounds like? I 100% cannot do this or even imagine
what it's like. People think it's unusual that I can deeply "feel" other
people and truly "see" objects in front of me in 3D space. If I listen to
music I get intense graphics/movies/colours. I'm also dyslexic so I can/do
strongly believe in neurodiversity.

~~~
evmar
Try out
[https://www.reddit.com/r/noisygifs/](https://www.reddit.com/r/noisygifs/)

~~~
Eleopteryx
It's not always interpolating the sounds that would actually occur. Yes, a
hammer hitting something will produce the relevant sound in my head, but it
can be quite a bit more abstract than that.

Imagine someone dancing in an animated gif. Each motion has a particular
"swoosh" or "pop" or "bang" to it. It's kind of weird to describe. As the gif
replaces, the same sounds play over and over. I couldn't turn it off if I
wanted to.

Take this for example:
[https://i.imgur.com/eVeYyCq.gifv](https://i.imgur.com/eVeYyCq.gifv). In real
life I imagine I would hear the woman grunting or growling as she tried to
lift the tire. But in my head I can only hear the motion of her legs as they
shift to accomodate the weight, making sort of a "kathoomp thoomp thoomp" each
time her feet touch the ground.

Makes me think of how a musical score can capture the energy of a scene so
well; I'll bet those musicians can probably "hear" the scene without even
trying.

~~~
neom
Absolutely amazing, thanks for sharing this.

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desireco42
Man, how come I am so normal, not a single weird thing to happen to me :) !.

Last night, while I was laying in bed, with eyes closed, I see flash, I think
to myself: "Man, I am finally getting visual halucinations, how awesome!"...
then I hear thunder rumbling...

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pizza
related:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideasthesia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideasthesia)

I wonder how saccades are involved in the phenomenon in OP

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mangeletti
Get ready for every unique snowflake you know to claim that they have this
new, special power :)

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daxfohl
Mitch Hedberg eat your heart out!

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snarfy
Bright lights make my ears ring.

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logicallee
If one in five people hears flashes of lights, I'd expect one in five writers
to use such words, to describe evocatively some scene with that in it; I'd
expect others to think it's some metaphor, and I'd expect a few sound-words to
make it into the language of describing flashes of lights. so, are there any?
stars twinkle - but they don't "sizzle" or "crackle". a shooting star or a
far-off flare does not "sigh" or "whistle" or click or any other sound word.
Can anyone think of a single common, and clear example in the language?

If not - why not?

I've used lots of words to describe lights (shimmer, twinkle, etc) not one of
which happened to be introduced by one or more writers using sound-words
evocatively. We could say "I saw a flare pop in the distance" \- but we don't.
Why didn't these 20% of writers make some sort of mark on the language like
that? (with everyone else not realizing it wasn't supposed to be a metaphor?)

~~~
JasonSage
Pure speculation on my part, but I think to some extent writers are
conditioned to think of writing things a certain way by the sheer amount of
literature they read, creating a reinforcement loop where there are various
idiomatic ways to explain things and moving too far away from that is jarring
to the reader.

~~~
logicallee
But lots and lots of writers (and poets!) are happy to go for jarring effects
:) I wonder if a single one of them has ever used a sound-word to describe a
flash of light. Even ambiguously. (for example, I said we could say "I saw a
flare pop in the distance" \- and it could be about the sound/act of firing
the flare, rather than what thd sight "sounds like". (so 80% of readers could
misunderstand.) so can anyone quote an example from poetry or literature?

