Brain Series Current: The McGurk Effect Superfood for Your Brain All Posts Pareidolia Watch someone’s lips say “ga” while the audio plays “ba,” and your brain will hear “da”-a sound that doesn’t exist in either the visual or auditory input. ...
Dr. P. was a distinguished music teacher and singer who could tell you the exact interval between any two notes you played. He could identify a Brahms sonata from the first three measures. He could conduct a choir through complex harmonies without missing a beat. But he couldn’t recognize his wife’s face. Worse than that-when Dr. P. went to leave the neurologist’s office after his examination, he reached for his wife’s head and tried to lift it off her shoulders. ...
A man is waiting for his wife outside a restaurant. A woman approaches him. She’s smiling, clearly recognizing him. She starts talking as if they know each other well. He has no idea who she is. He politely engages, trying to figure out from context clues who this person might be. A colleague? A neighbor? Someone from his wife’s social circle? The woman seems confused by his confusion. She touches his arm, says something about “the kids.” ...
A woman hears the word “Derek” and immediately tastes earwax. Another person sees the number 5 as inherently, unavoidably red. Not because of any association or memory-it’s just red, the way the sky is blue. A musician feels violin notes as textures on his skin-high notes feel smooth and cool, low notes feel rough and warm. A painter sees every letter and number in specific colors. A is red, B is blue, C is yellow. She’s never seen them any other way. ...
You look down at your hands. They’re gigantic-swollen to three times their normal size, fingers like sausages, impossibly huge. You look at the room around you. It’s shrinking. The walls are closing in. The ceiling is descending. Everything is becoming tiny while you expand to fill the space. Or wait-are you shrinking? The room is growing massive. The doorway has become a cathedral entrance. Your hands are doll-sized. You are small, impossibly small, while the world balloons around you. ...
I once rejected a brilliant engineering candidate because their resume had a typo. Not in their work history. Not in their technical skills. In the summary section: “atention to detail” instead of “attention to detail.” My brain went: “Typo → careless → probably writes buggy code → not a good hire.” I passed. Another company hired them. They became a principal engineer there and later gave a keynote at a major conference. ...