22% of people can listen to videos without sound (take this quiz to see if you’re one of them)

There are people who can hear what they are seeing, like the sound of a car turning signal or footsteps on the sidewalk, even if they are too far from the action. Just don’t think it has to do with superpowers, as there is a neurological phenomenon behind it: synesthesia.

we from awesome.club we investigated the issue and proposed a test to find out if you are also able to hear sounds that are not there. Or rather, that they exist, but only in the mind.

In 2017, researcher Lisa DeBruine, from the Institute of Psychology at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, sparked an uproar on Twitter by sharing a moving image with no audio, with a poll immediately following asking: “How do you feel when you see this one? GIF?”

In this surveywhich was attended by more than 315,000 Twitter users, 67% of people said they listened to the impact sound — like a BOOM or “BÓIM” — every time the antenna touched the ground.

Super power? Magic? None of that. Everything has a neurological explanation: synesthesia. The phenomenon occurs when the brain “shuffles” different sensory planes. There are several people who are impacted by this mind game, such as:

American physicist Richard Feynman, Nobel laureate in 1965, saw colored letters when looking at equations🇧🇷 Canadian musician Greg Jarvis says that see shapes when listening to different instruments🇧🇷 But even in the case of noises, like an approaching subway car, he sees an abstract form. Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh explained in a letter to his brother Theo that associated painting techniques with soundsmore specifically, to musical instruments.

In the case of the GIF shown at the beginning of this article, scientists call the phenomenon see or “Visual Ear” (“visual ear”, in translation), which is an auditory response to a visual stimulus. These cases are extensively studied by researcher Elliot Freeman of City University in London.

Elliot’s research found that 22% of people can hear moving pictures without sound🇧🇷 Furthermore, the results showed that this type of auditory perception is so real that it can even interfere with the detection of true sounds. Quite interesting, isn’t it?

Now that the scientific background behind the phenomenon has been explained, we want to test if you can also hear sounds in silent GIFs. Press play!

Are you part of the group of people who can “listen” to videos without sound? Which of these GIFs made the most noise? Tell us in the comments.