If you’ve even connected to internet at all within the past week, you’ve probably seen the great debate over the “Laurel/Yanni” audio clip.

For those unfamiliar, you can find the clip on our Facebook page, but here’s a brief synopsis: it’s just a male voice saying a word that either distinctly sounds like “Laurel” or “Yanni”, depending on who you ask. It’s reminiscent of the great Dress debacle a few years back, with some firmly within the “Laurel” camp, some fiercely defending “Yanni”, and a few who flip-flop based on the weather, their mood, the volume, or whatever causes them to magically hear different things.

Some internet sleuths have tried to decode the mystery themselves, changing the bass levels to create a higher, more nasally “Yanni”-sided clip or lower, darker-toned “Laurel” evidence. But, if you’ve only ever heard one of the two, you’re probably completely convinced that everyone hearing the other thing is conspiring against you to convince you you’ve lost your mind- but there’s actually some science behind this.

It’s all because of the McGurk Effect. It may sound like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, but it’s real and scientific and totally legit. Basically, when the human brain sees or hears something it doesn’t completely understand, it fills in whatever visuals or vowels it needs to understand it. The recording is actually something between “Yanni” and “Laurel”, and our individual brains get it to sound like one or the other to make things a bit less confusing for us.

So no, you’re not crazy if you hear something that none of your coworkers or friends hear. Well, you might still be crazy actually – but not because of that.