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Comment by foo101 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

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