
The eardrums move when the eyes move - hprotagonist
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/01/22/1717948115
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amelius
There is a medical condition where people can hear their own eye movements.

> The bizarre phenomenon of being able to hear the sound of the eyeballs
> moving in their sockets (e.g. when reading in a quiet room) "like sandpaper
> on wood" is one of the more distinctive features of this condition and is
> almost exclusively associated with SCDS.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_canal_dehiscence_sy...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_canal_dehiscence_syndrome)

~~~
lutorm
I can hear my eye movements. It used to be only when I was tired or sick, but
with age it's become more prevalent.

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ComputerGuru
I have always felt it, but presumed it was "cross talk" in the optical nerves
being interpreted as "movement" in the outer ear.

You might be able to experience it yourself. Just move your eyes all the way
(ALL the way) to the right or left and hold them there for a second, you might
hear/feel a high-pitched sensation almost like a slight tickle right where
your eardrum is.

~~~
danw1979
Until you pointed this out, I hadn’t noticed it, but it has indeed always been
there.

I wonder what other sensory anomalies we experience without realising ?

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ThrustVectoring
This is why buddhist monks talk about reality vibrating - the continuity of
reality is an illusion constructed by the brain, while the actual perceptions
generated are a series of discrete experiences.

Also, eye saccades are a great example of this. If you look at your own eyes
in the mirror and switch between looking at your left and right eyes, you
don't see your eyes move. If you watch someone else do this, you do.

~~~
martin-adams
Yes, it is also why when you look suddenly at a clock it appears to be
stopped. This explains it in more detail:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNBTLbw1_2Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNBTLbw1_2Q)

~~~
dingo_bat
This thing perplexed me to no end when I was younger. I literally used to sit
around for hours after school, trying to catch the wall clock stopped.

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AtomicOrbital
interestingly the ear has recently been found to oscillate its follicles at
frequencies which enhance what the brain wants to hear ... Hudspeth AJ
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/DAED_a_00316](http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/DAED_a_00316)
... science has barely scratched the surface of even the feeblest
understanding of biophysics, what a great time to be alive

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bcryptd
Is this why people turn the radio down when trying to look for an address,
parking space, etc?

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lttlrck
If I listen to the radio (speech) and then start to read and try to
simultaneously listen to the radio it becomes incomprehensible. Quite weird.

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wh313
Funny, it still works for me. Could it be an attention thing instead?

~~~
pharke
Probably has more to do with how you process written vs audio information.
Richard Feynman had an anecdote about discovering that he couldn't read and
count in his head at the same time but others could, turned out the person who
could counted in his head by visualizing the numbers rather than 'hearing'
them in his inner monologue which allowed him to continue reading.

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skybrian
You might find this article easier to read:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/01/when-
you...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/01/when-your-eyes-
move-so-do-your-eardrums/551237/)

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intrasight
About 5% of the nerves in the auditory nerve are efferent, and act to modulate
the firing of the afferent nerves. Perhaps part of the modulation they achieve
is to prevent us "hearing" our eyes move.

~~~
intrasight
Ah, for example:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3343276/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3343276/)

"Historical evidence in-vivo suggests that a primary function of the EVS is to
tune vestibular sensation to the interest and needs of the organism, for
example by decreasing the sensitivity during large self-generated movements
[30, 31], and adjusting the background discharge characteristics of afferents
[6]."

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yorby
My sister can blow air by the corner of her eyes... it might all be connected.

~~~
whatshisface
Tears are set up to drain into the nasal cavity, so when she does that she's
probably just forcing air back up the drain.

[http://care.american-
rhinologic.org/sinus_anatomy?print](http://care.american-
rhinologic.org/sinus_anatomy?print)

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JabavuAdams
This makes me wonder ... um ... this might be TMI, but I'm wondering if anyone
else has experienced a sudden "clearing" of the sense of smell when washing
the perineum. Do we have olfactory cells down there that kind of cancel out
our own scent?

I'll start washing "downstairs" and experience a something analogous to clouds
parting, but for smell. It's not the smell of the soap per-se, it's a sudden
removal of some kind of dullness or dampening.

Always meant to ask about this, but was inhibited. Now you know.

~~~
somethingsimple
Never heard of it, but I have a weird one too: my left ear pops when I crack
my upper back.

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ghthor
Most of the tissue in the neck and exteding into the upper back is connected
to the walls of the sinus cavities. Stretching the jaw, neck and
shoulders/upper back does a good job of massaging the interal parts of the
sinuses that are unrechable otherwise. Feels really good after you hydrate
them, from a shower, and you might loosen and expell some nasty snot that
could be draining your immune energy!

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1812Overture
Oh god I can feel them doing it now.

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rfdub
As soon as I tried to sense it I could and now I can't stop.

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matte_black
This is torture, how do you stop it???

Don’t try this if you haven’t!!

~~~
josephjrobison
You’ll forget about it by tomorrow. It’s like when you think about your
breathing you feel like you’ll be stuck remembering to breathe for the rest of
your life!

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filoeleven
I’ve noticed that when I’m lying in bed in the dark with eyes closed, a sharp
unexpected sound (like the popping of a settling structure, not necessarily
all that loud) will cause a flash of light across my visual field. I wonder if
that is a side-effect of this kind of connection.

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nerdponx
Is this something a person would be able to perceive?

I am moving my eyeballs around and imagining I can also feel my ears move, but
that might just be the muscles around my ears in my head, or I'm completely
imagining the effect.

~~~
pazimzadeh
My guess is that the data gets sent to the brain but sometime during
development the brain learned to ignore it (if it's not useful).

I think that when people talk about the "doors of perception" being opened by
psychedelic drugs, often leading to experiences of synesthesia (seeing sound,
etc), that it's this kind of sensory data that's made available to the brain
once again, or that the brain is made unable to ignore it.

~~~
thinkingemote
I recently read a study based in experiments which said that contrary to the
idea that psychedelics make the world unfiltered and open up the brain to more
information, what they actually do is the reverse. Psychedelics reduce
information, reduce sensory input, and as a consequence the brain fills in the
gaps via hallucinations.

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stevebmark
This is incredible. You would think this connection would be obviously known,
but it's only recently discovered? I wonder what other fascinating human body
connections exist that have yet to be discovered.

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ohtwenty
I wonder how this works for blind people that 'look' somewhere?

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slothguy72
This is exactly what I wondered while reading this. I would be very interested
to see a study to see if this was still present with eye movement in vision
impaired people.

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EGreg
Ever notice when you chew the sound gets attenuated when you clamp down?

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taneq
That's one of the automatic functions of the tensor tympani muscle. It also
does it when you talk, and as part of your startle reflex.

Fun fact: some people have conscious control of this muscle and can
voluntarily "screw up their ears" (at least that's what it feels like, it also
makes a roaring/rushing sound) to dampen sounds.

~~~
SCHiM
Haha that's what it is.

There's more tricks too, I'm able to close my nose by a muscle somewhere in
the back of my throat. I've asked my friends if they could, but they al say
they can't. Anyone else have that?

~~~
taneq
Is being able to close off your nose not normal? How do people blow up
balloons (or otherwise blow air hard out of their mouths) without doing that?

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gt_
Interesting. I am no audio engineer but maybe this could add another layer of
immersion to a VR system using binaural audio and eye tracking data.

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kingkawn
Anyone who can wiggle their ears can confirm this.

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JabavuAdams
I was wondering what that was. Never thought to investigate it. Huh.

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dmead
i thought that was just my brain trying to escape from my ears.

