Can Your Eyes Really Eavesdrop? This Brain Test Will Spill the Tea on Your Hidden Superpower!
Added on November 9, 2025 inASTROLOGY CARDS
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Ever get the feeling your eyes are playing tricks on your ears? No, you’re not just imagining things—or falling victim to Mercury in retrograde stirring up all sorts of cosmic confusion. It turns out, our brains are wired to blend what we see with what we hear, creating a wild cocktail of perception that’s part magic, part mind-boggling psychology. This phenomenon, famously known as the McGurk effect, proves that lip-reading isn’t just for spies or soap opera stars—our eyes literally help us “hear” speech, even when what we see doesn’t quite match the sounds. Intrigued? This simple brain test, spotlighted by a viral TikTok video, reveals just how deeply your senses are intertwined, making you question: can you truly trust your own ears without your eyes chiming in? Dive in and find out if you’re a bona fide audiovisual fusion pro—or just another cosmic puzzle piece caught in the dance of perception. LEARN MORE
The primary sense for humans is vision. We depend on it in every aspect of our lives, and it is pretty straightforward.
Speech, on the other hand, is multimodal, meaning it relies on both auditory components and visual information. This is demonstrated every day in individuals with hearing disabilities.
They might be able to hear some parts of auditory speech, but also rely on lip movements, using those visual components to decipher speech, sound, and individual words. But you don’t have to be hearing impaired to use auditory perception and visual influence to hear. It comes second nature to us and is done automatically. We use auditory and visual information to understand what people are saying.
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To test whether or not you use visual components along with what you hear to understand speech, Dan Mirea shared a TikTok video that tests your propensity to combine visual and auditory senses.
The test starts with a man saying “ba” over and over again. It’s evident that he is “mouthing” the sound simultaneously, so if you were to read his lips, you would come up with the correct sound he is making.
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Next, Mirea adds another clip of the man making a similar sound, but if you are looking at him, you might notice that the movement of his lips is more conducive with pronunciation of a “V” or an “F.” If asked to reveal what you heard, you might say that he said “fa” or “va” when, in actuality, he made the exact same sound but changed his visual speech to throw you off.
You have just experienced the McGurk effect. The McGurk effect was first described in a 1976 paper entitled “Hearing Lips and Seeing Voices” by Harry McGurk and John MacDonald.
They found that a video with a different word spoken than mouthed resulted in a multi-sensory illusion where they heard different words. This was believed to happen because of the common visual properties of phonetics.
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When McGurk stimuli were provided using fusions, responses were incorrect as to the sound made. For example, someone saying “ba” but appearing to say “ga” produced a perception that they were saying “ga.”
The audiovisual speech is confusing and contradictory, but one of them has a greater influence on the brain, generating particular responses. One study demonstrated that people integrate what they hear with what they see from a person talking when they perceive speech.
Since McGurk and MacDonald first introduced the concept, several studies have confirmed that visual and auditory information merge to form an integrated perception of speech.
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We truly need both to operate because, except for people who only read lips to understand what is being said, most people are extremely limited when it comes to using only their vision to “hear.”
NyRee Ausler is a writer from Seattle, Washington, and the author of seven books. She focuses on lifestyle and human interest stories that deliver informative and actionable guidance on interpersonal relationships, enlightenment, and self-discovery.
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