PhD student at @Harvard & @MIT studying the neural basis of auditory perception. Science communicator at @SITNBoston. An ailurophile & a zythophile. She/her.
May 15, 2018 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
1/7 Okay dweebs, here’s the science behind that “laurel vs. yanny” thing people keep sending me. It has to do with which frequencies of the sound are actually making it to your brain. This can be affected by several things: headphones / speakers, listening volume, hearing loss...
2/7 It’s a recording of a single word (there’s no trickery), but the identity of that word seems to change depending on which frequencies are amplified. Here is me saying “laurel...yanny.” Time is on the x-axis, the y-axis is frequency. Regions with more energy are darker black.
