how do phantom sounds work? I.e. hearing sounds (like your phone ringing) that are not actually there
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It’s a bit too broad of a question. There are many different possible “phantom sounds” that you might hear, all of them being of different nature, appearing in different contexts, and being caused by different things. As such there really isn’t a specific answer other than “it depends”, it can be caused by everything from Apophenia, Pareidolia, Cocktail party effect, negative anticipation loop effect, to even stuff like tinnitus or psychological disorders.
For the specific example of your phone ringing, also referred to as PVS phantom vibration syndrome, it’s a combination of factors. In general it’s a interpretation based hallucination, meaning your brain confuses one sensory input with another of the same kind, usually the feeling of touching the phone and the feeling of vibration, or a background noise and the ringtone. It’s caused by the stress resulting from over reliance on that technology. Our brains are paranoid by nature because it’s safer for your survival to “see things where there are none than don’t see them when they are important”, which shows in us seeing faces in stuff and animals in the dark. Our brain is also extremely plastic and it adapts to possible environmental factors, and if your phone is such an “environment”, where you are often feeling anticipation, possibly stressful one, for the sound of your ringtone or for a notification, then your mind will subconsciously learn to thinking that “those sounds might be important cause waiting for them made me stressed out”, and as such it will act towards them in the same kinda paranoid manner as it does towards other important stimuli
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