Sometimes I think someone has called my name and they never said anything.
Sometimes I’ve even heard what seemed like someone shout right next to my face, but that mostly happens when I’m close to falling asleep!
I hope that makes a bit of sense!
In: Other
To add to the other comments – your brain is pretty optimised for extracting patterns out of all sorts of nerve stimulation and matching them with things it has encountered before, but it can be too sensitive, pick out patterns and declare a match without really checking its work.
As a little example, we recently had some patio doors replaced and changed from sliding doors to hinged doors – I was washing up in the next room when I heard them being opened, and my brain ‘identified’ the sound as the familiar sliding noise because that’s what it was expecting, so I ‘heard’ the sliding track noise in my head even though the actual noise was different. The washing up noise was probably just enough to muffle the sound so my brain went ‘meh, close enough’.
My brain just took a shortcut in the identification process – much the same as when your brain picked up some little sound that was a little bit like your name, and jumped straight for ‘you just heard someone calling your name!’ which is something you are wired to respond to.
Latest Answers