Auditory Illusions — When Hearing Deceives the Brain
Auditory Illusions — Hearing What We Expect
Auditory Illusions — Hearing What We Expect
Just like vision, hearing is shaped heavily by prediction. Auditory illusions show that the brain fills in missing sound, corrects noise, and interprets speech using expectation.
🗣 1. McGurk Effect
When the sound “ba” is paired with a video of lips saying “fa,” people hear “fa.” Vision rewrites hearing.
Why it matters: the brain predicts speech using multi-sensory integration, not sound alone.
🔊 2. Phoneme Restoration Effect
A missing sound in a word is “filled in” by the brain even though the sound never occurred.
Example: “It was found that the *cough* eel was on the axle.” You hear “wheel,” but the “w” never existed.
🎵 3. Shepard Tone (the “infinite” pitch)
A tone seems to rise forever, but never actually gets higher.
This illusion shows how the brain predicts musical structure and continuity.
