One in five of us may 'hear' flashes of light | Hacker News Reader

One in five of us may 'hear' flashes of light

theguardian.com

115 pointsjonbaer110 comments

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

Now I know the name of this phenomenon. This happens to my ears between songs when I'm wearing headphones.

I don't know - that might be your ears ringing because the volume was too loud? Kind of like the ringing in your ears after you've been at a loud live music event?

Yes, I experience that when stopping a loudish song when wearing headphones. Who would have thought that sudden silence would cause an uncomfortable reaction.

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.

From Wikipedia: "in humans, the acoustic reflex only involves the contraction of the stapedius muscle -not the tensor tympani."

wtf. After reading this comment my ears started to rumble. So that's weird.

Ditto, but after your comment. Odd.

I read the article and both of your comments but it didn't happen for me. I feel left out now.

> I learned to control it voluntarily and can make my ears rumble whenever I want.

I always assumed everyone could do that - I've been able to do it for as long as I can remember, and can (to a minor extent) vary the intensity between ears.

Completely the same for me, never questioned if this was some hidden talent.

I often get the same experience when say on a train on a summers day. It's like an on/off switch, rumbles in the light, quiet in the shade.

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

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.

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

Huh, I thought this was the val salva maneuver.

... and when flying! (normally, I mean)

Just thinking about it now ... I kinda pull my jaw back a bit and push my tongue against the back of my throat, like the first half second of a swallowing action. It's enough to make a little 'click' in my hearing, even when I've not changed altitude.

> I learned to control it voluntarily

How did you learn this?

Pinch your nostrils, and blow through your nose gently. The blocked air will build pressure in your ear and you will trigger the mechanism.

Do it slowly, but at one point, you'll need to force a little to trigger it.

Then the ear will go back to it's original state.

Do it several times. At one point you won't be able to do it anymore. The ear will stay like that for some time. Rest a bit.

Then practice again.

Once you got it, force yourself to yawn, and try to reproduce the effect while yawning.

The once you can do that, try to do it without yawning.

In the end, it's not a useless skill. It's very useful when you take the plane a lot, go skying in hight altitude or dive in deep water. It let you release the pressure from your ears at will.

We should teach it to all children. You often see them crying in planes because their ears hurting while the pressure changes. If you encounter that, ask them to do the first exercise (blow with the nostrils blocked). If they can't (sometime it's too late, the pressure is too high and that would hurt), make them chew something.

lol I do something like this with a beat... it makes for wicked bass when mentally/internally running a tune.

Not the same as the rumbling sound, but doing some sort of opening in the ear internally does give some wicked bass. I do that when in the shower as opposed to singing.

Doctor of audiology here. I think you are mistaken. The acoustic reflex cannot be triggered in this way. The reflex is triggered only after being exposed to a very loud sound.

How do you know?

"Doctor of audiology"?

I am loling, but I think perhaps parent meant to ask "how is it known [... to doctors of audiology]". I.e. how did people determine thay fact. Or maybe he was just being a smartass.

On being a smartass - did you just assume my gender?

</straightface>

Is precisely the person I would hope can explain. Especially given the confidence placed into the negative assertion.

I could imagine a visual form of it being a conditioned reflex. The stapedius reflex is also triggered by vocalization, so clearly some level of top-down modulation is possible.

I too can make a rumbling sound at will since I was a child.

What is responsible for this?

I don't know how I discovered how to do this but it always seemed natural.

Sounds like voluntary opening of the eustachian tubes, also called BTV in freediving. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ear_clearing

Oh, Thanks. When I was a child I asked all the adults around about this, but they looked at me like I were a lunatic, so eventually I just stopped talking about it.... :) Glad to have an answer now.

I learned to do this as a child because I always had issues with feelings of pressure in my ears. I was so sensitive that riding up or down a hill that was big enough would cause discomfort.

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.

I think that's pretty common. At least, it happens to me, and I've mentioned it to several friends who said "oh yeah, that happens to me too"

+1 me too

I also experience this.

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

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

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

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.

> 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.

Interesting, I never knew there was a word for this. I get the "plunging into a bottomless pit" version myself.

This seems like the closest thing to describing a thing I sometimes experience, that I call a "glitch" or a "reboot". It feels like there's just a momentary… zap, or something. Maybe akin to pressing the degauss button on a CRT. Just a split-second interruption in normal processing, usually accompanied by a brief popping sound and/or sensory zap. It's hard to explain.

I really miss that button.

No, it's definitely real sounds. Generally pipes or creaking staircases.

Same here.

Those are floaters and flashes... https://www.aao.org/eye-health/diseases/what-are-floaters-fl...

No that's something completely different. travisl12 is talking about the 'exploding head syndrome'.

edit: no he's isn't, I mixed it up. He's talking about something related to the coupling of visual and auditory senses, e.g. the floor creaks and it causes the sensation of light.

No they're not. Why would you think that people would not be able to correlate the visual phenomena with the auditory stimulus? The article you link to doesn't even mention auditory phenomena so I don't know why you thought it would support your claim.

Also, please consider that it's extremely rude to just invalidate peoples' experiential claims, although I'm sure you didn't intend your comment in that spirit. Synaesthesia is a well-documented neurological phenomenon and you've just made yourself seem ignorant rather than clever.

I get that all the time too: Someone slams a door when I'm laying down, and it's like a flash going off in my face.

That's Exploding Head Syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome)

Err, no it's not: Individuals with exploding head syndrome hear or experience loud imagined noises as they are falling asleep or waking up.

I experience GP's comment as well and it's from real sounds.

One more +1

I experience this too. I'd be close to asleep and the floor may creak, or the radiator may ping, and it will turn into fireworks that look like a particular word in a particular font in a particular color.

Freaky stuff.

I see weird flashes when I close my eyes, especially when I close them hard. Not sure if this is a similar phenomenon.

That's most likely related to the pressure you exert on the retina. Close your eyes and press on you eyeballs, it should be even more intense.

Isn't that a warning sign of a possible or impending detached retina?

I've had it for as long as I can remember, so I don't think so. I do have poor vision though.

I had that too. From an engineers perspective it looks like there is a coupling between the auditory and visual system/nerve. It makes sense that it only happens when you are lying in bed because there is no sensory input and the 'gain of the signal amplifier' is at maximum.

And if you're tired parts of your brain fall asleep before the entire brain, so you could be more attuned to more primitive sensory effects.

There is a really cool 360 video of this actually by Discovery VR. Just watched it a couple days ago in my headset and learned about synesthesia. Is this what you have maybe? Seems like a pretty cool super power! ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obrBAysVef0

I have to show this post to my wife when she comes back home. She told me once that she remembers seeing colours for every loud noise since she was a kid. She even thought that everybody experienced sound/sight synesthesia the same way, and remembers the day she found out her siblings didn't.

That's the experience I have, except that I don't have to be near sleep. Leafblowers and those 'safety' beeping noises on commercial vehicles are the bane of my life.

I get this too, but it's always white, and usually flashes from the direction of the sound.

I get that. It's not just a flash, either; it's usually a highly regular geometric pattern, like a checkerboard or something like [this](http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/poincare/tess_5_4.gif).

Do the patterns move or change color?

No, it's a very bright, instantaneous flash; just a hanful of milliseconds, like a flashbulb going off. There wouldn't be time for movement.

I get this too. They are slightly more regular and monochromatic geometric shapes than your example. I suspect the shapes may vary according to the loudness and suddenness of the noise, e.g. something big and heavy falling off a shelf in the room vs a car door slamming outside. I suspect I'd also see them in the day time if my eyes were closed, but there is so much other light and sound that the opportunity doesn't really arise. Like you say they are so fleeting that its hard to say the patterns move or change colour, but there might be a brief change as they flash in and fade.

I also have this. Intensity of the noise correlates to the brightness of the flash. Also, it isn't every noise for me. "Sharp" noises, like a door closing or my cat knocking a book off a table, etc make the flash. The heater hummin. Along in the background does nothing.

Count me in. My LCD monitor gets hot with usage all day, and is next to my bed (very close to my pillow). I turn it off just before going to bed. In a few minutes, the monitor cools down, and the plastic makes a crackling sound. Boom. Flash of light.

Yeah, and the visual patterns seem to somehow relate to the character of the sounds. I've always wondered if I'm seeing a 2D spectrogram of the sound, or something similar.

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

It happens fairly often to me, and I've noticed a couple of odd things about it. For one, it almost always causes me to sneeze twice in succession, rarely once but never more than twice. I've also noticed that I have the opposite habit - if I feel like I'm about to sneeze, I often glance over at the nearest light source without even thinking.

I also have an incredibly specific form of synaesthesia (or something similar at least). I've never noticed it with anything else, but pinot grigio wines always 'taste' blue to me. It's difficult to describe, but it's just an instant sense of "this is what that shade of blue tastes like" and mentally seeing a flash of that colour.

Similar shade to this, but a tad darker: http://www.lcbo.com/content/dam/lcbo/products/084186.jpg/jcr...

Happens to me all the time and it's annoying (especially when driving). Triggers every time when going outside and sun is shinning. On the bright side, after 2-3 sneezes it goes away.

oh yes. i've always had that. going out of a building into sunlight often makes me sneeze.

I've heard that is true for 1 in 3 people. It actually has a reasonable explanation. The optic nerve bundle passes near the olfactory nerve bundle at some point. Its just signal cross talk. God's PCB designer having an off day.

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.

nope not universal.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

That's probably more of an echo from the boards.

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.

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.

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

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/

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?

That might actually be the computer making the sound:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8862689

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.

>a synaesthesia-like phenomenon

How is this different than synesthesia?

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

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.

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

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.

Hi, I experienced some auditory sensation for a few videos. The police sirens were particularly vivid - I imagined a series of rising tones quite involuntarily. The description of this sound as coming from "inside your head" is particularly apt - it is not an auditory hallucination, it's more like something I am imagining involuntarily. Interestingly, what I imagine is the same every time I watch the video.

In retrospect, I have experienced this phenomenon everyday, but never thought much about it.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Try out https://www.reddit.com/r/noisygifs/

That is the most evil Continue button dark pattern I have ever seen on a supposedly high-quality site. Shame on Reddit.

Clicking the link shows a modal/pop-over pitching the Reddit app. Below the app link is a big Continue button, below that is a tiny link in light gray text in brackets saying ~"Continue to mobile site". Every indication is that the Continue button will load either the desktop site or the mobile site, but no, it loads the Play store.

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. 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.

Absolutely amazing, thanks for sharing this.

Internally it sounds like an extremely flat and diminished version of how I imagine the "real" sound". Like if I'm watching a looping GIF of an explosion, I can "hear" an imagined sound over and over.

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...

I wonder how saccades are involved in the phenomenon in OP

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

Mitch Hedberg eat your heart out!

Bright lights make my ears ring.

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?)

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.

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?

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