Woman Claims She Has ‘Polyphonic Perception’, Giving Her Rare Ability to Identify a Beat

A TikTok influencer’s breakdown of a Justin Timberlake song has some viewers cracking up and confused.

User Brelle the Nail Connoisseur sparked reactions online after sharing a video that intriguingly explained what she described as “polyphonic perception.”

In the video, originally shared on July 11, Brelle stands in her kitchen while the chorus of Timberlake’s “My Love” plays, gesturing with her fingers to indicate the different beats and production layers from co-producers Timbaland and Danjah she hears in the song.

“Visual representation of polyphonic perception for me,” she wrote on the video’s overlay text.

The video was later reposted to X (formerly Twitter) where reactions poured in.

"This is literally the funniest video to hit socials this week," wrote one user. "She concentrating hard as shit for a bunch of nothing LMAOOOOOO."

Another asked, “This not how everyone hears music?”

"This is legit how i acted the first time i put in headphones after smoking weed" wrote another user.

"No way yall think being able to hear song layers is some type of super power lmfao" added another viewer.

Check out more reactions below.

The day before the viral post, Brelle uploaded a separate TikTok explaining how she’d only recently discovered that polyphonic perception is actually a real thing.

"It's me being today years old that I found out 'polyphonic perception' was a real thing. I didn't get diagnosed with ADHD until I was 29, which was last year. And I feel like I have just discovered a new layer of the way my fucking brain works,” she said in the clip.

“Because my entire life I have always been able to hear a song, sing it, tap my fingers to one beat, tap my foot to another beat, but dance to something else … And I thought everybody could do that. And now I'm learning that everybody cannot. I really want to know what it feels like to be a non-neurodivergent person,” Brelle added.

However, the phrase isn’t just some newly-made up Gen Z terminology.

In fact, the Society for Music Theory defines polyphonic perception as the mind’s ability to perceive musical elements from different vantage points.

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