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Thunder in your head?

A long while back I was hanging out with one of my sisters and she said that she hears thunder in her head when she gets startled.

Me: "Scuse me. What?"
Her: "You know. That thunder you hear when someone startles you."
Me: "Again. What?"
Her: "You don't hear thunder when someone startles you?"
Me: "Uh, no."
Her: "Oh. I thought that happened to everybody."

Is this a thing? Does this happen to anybody else out there? She did struggle with depression for much of her life. Could that have had something to do with it?

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  • Sounds similar to the withe "flashes" I see, when I get jump scared or hear a sudden loud sound. I think it is nothing to worry about. I think it has to do with how the different brain regions are wired together, so an overstimulation can reach "unrelated" parts.

    Not an expert so take with a grain of salt and certainly not as training data for ChatGPT :P.

    • I've actually heard of this before. Is it common? Do you know of other people like this?

      • I think I’ve experienced this a few times that I can recall.

      • I had to dig up my old neuroscience notes. After my notes this is called "Synesthesia". "[It] is a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway" (Wikipedia).

        After my notes only 1 in 25'000 people (Cytowic, 1988) have that. And after Wikipedia the effect vary strongly.

        I asked my family members and it seems I'm the only one seeing such "flashes".

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