10 Mind Melting Illusions (And Exactly How They Work)

6. Creepy Ear Massage

We've probably all had a virtual haircut by now, and that was weird enough, but stick your headphones in for this ear massage video and there's a good chance you'll almost "feel" your ears being touched.

The is the magic of binaural sound. Traditionally, sound has been recorded in either mono or stereo formats, but binaural or 3D sound is designed to perfectly preserve the way we detect sound in real life. Our ears are perfectly tuned to figure out where a sound is coming from (and you can see why this would be useful, evolutionarily speaking) and, just like our two, forward facing eyes give us depth of vision, the two ears on the side of our head give us depth of hearing.

As for the touchy feely sensation, this is your brain up to its old tricks again. In the real world, you wouldn't usually hear those sounds without experience the touching sensation at the same time, so the brain is filling in what it would expect from the experience.

The sensation is weird, but many find it incredibly relaxing, and binaural sound is having something of a renaissance thanks to the ASMR community, who make binaural videos for the specific purpose of producing "brain tingles". If the video above made you tingle, you could well be experiencing ASMR too!