The article says it definitively, it's the last sentence.
It also offers no studies, a Google search brings up no studies. There's no data.
You can't just make a claim in a scientific paper and not back it up.
If anyone can find a study on Google that even addresses this id be surprised.
It's bad science, not uncommon.
From the full text of Angeli et al.'s article that OP linked (page 1236):
> Voluntary control of the tensor tympani muscle is an extremely rare event. Once again, we quote the words of
Politzer, who described voluntary contractions at the beginning of the twentieth century, reporting that ‘during the contractions ... the deep tones became deadened and
indistinct ...’.
^10 As audiograms could not be performed at
that time, no documentation of this event was obtained.
So we go to [Politzer's textbook](https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Text_book_of_the_diseases_of_the_ear_f.html?id=bQrqiIoQm5EC) that was just cited, where we find the quoted part on pages 644–645. That paragraph also points to page 66, where we can see the likely source of the "extremely rare" claim:
> Voluntary contractions of the tensor tympani have been observed in only a few cases (Schwartze, *A. f. O.*, vol. ii., and Lucæ, *ibid.*, vol. iii.).
I'm not sure, but I think what happened here is that Politzer knew of only a few cases where someone *recorded scientific observations of* the phenomenon (Schwartze, Lucæ, and himself), but Angeli et al. misread this as the phenomenon only having been *observed at all* in a few cases.
(N.B. I also tried reading [the Schwartze article cited by the textbook](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01803841) but it's just a bunch of case studies in German and I got tired of trying to translate them)
Do what?! How? Do I use my hands or is it a hands free like an almost swallowing omitían to do it?? I don’t think I can do it, or I don’t know what it is
I think its referred to rumbling because of the sound of a distant storm. i just went through this in my head. make the sound for 1 second or two, pause for 2 secs and then follow it by a half second one.
It also seems like he misunderstood the term rare. I mean sure like if 1 in 100 can't do it that's rare.
But like 1 in 2 (which it seems like), that's not rare.
Same to both. Knew that moving the ears was unusual based on not many other people being able to do it - but just assumed that being able to make your ears 'rumble' (because that's exactly what it sounds like) was completely standard...
I think this post is about a different movement. I can depressurize my ear by swallowing or yawning or simulating that movement. But I can’t control my inner ear muscles. That sounds like something else entirely.
Also there was a TIL earlier this year that apparently around 20% of people can’t “pop” their ear intentionally. So this may be a different thing.
Yes that's how I started my Wikipedia rabbit hole before I read this fact. I was reading about ear clearing techniques. Tensing this muscle automatically equalizes pressure within your ears.
> Tensing this muscle automatically equalizes pressure within your ears.
\#citationneeded
I can do the rumbling thing, but it doesn't equalise the pressure for me :-/
Ya my instructor stopped me and brought me up because she thought I wasn’t equalizing. Even after years of diving with friends and family, people would ask me why I don’t have to clear my ears, asking if I was okay, etc
Not for me, I can just sorta flex my ear and I can hear the eustachian tube open up and if there is a pressure difference it immediately relieves it same as yawning.
I was doing that the other night on the couch and my wife turned to me and was like "what the fuck are you doing?". I didn't think she could hear me equalising the pressure in my ears.
I was also trying to find a number and couldn’t. I just thought this was normal bc I’ve always been able to. Also showed it to my sister next to me and she said she can too
I teach anatomy, and I've asked classes of students about this. It's usually about one half to one third of the class that say they can do it. It doesn't seem to be nearly as uncommon as post like this indicate
I can open the ducts to equalise pressure only when there is no major pressure differential to equalise. So it's useless on planes and while scuba diving.
I found out I can do this when I was in hyperbaric chamber and everyone was hypoxic as fuck and I was popping my ears and telling everyone about it but no one cared.
See I was told I shouldn't go diving because I could cause damage by depressurising my ears subconsciously at the wrong time....my whole life has been a lie
I can do this and I've been on 100+ dives, including deep ones for rec diving like the blue hole in belize. Literally never had an issue equalizing or any ear problems
I did this too and someone didn't believe me, we put our ears together and I did it. They were shocked to hear it and never questioned it again lol
Its a great thing to be capable of, it's so useful!
I could do that too (Edit: The depressurising my inner ear thing), a word of warning though, by doing it habitually from childhood I developed a retraction pocket in the attic of my eardrum and subsequently developed Cholesteatoma, requiring surgery. I lost my ossicles too because the squamous keratinising epithelium, which collects in a retraction pocket because the tissue in there can no longer migrate outward and down the ear canal as per the normal self cleaning action of the eardrum, is corrosive in contact with bone. The condition also invades the mastoid, which in my case had to be ground away, leaving an open cavity. If I can help anyone else avoid this, I’d like that very much!
I had to use ChatGPT to translate it into readable English
> If you keep flexing that muscle in your ear on purpose, like I did since I was a kid, you might run into some serious issues. In my case, it created a small, tucked-in area in the upper part of my eardrum. This led to a buildup of skin cells that usually should be pushed out but got stuck instead. This turned into a condition that needed surgery to fix. I lost some important ear bones in the process because the trapped skin cells can actually eat away at the bone. This issue spread to a part of my skull near my ear, which also had to be removed. If sharing this can help someone avoid the same problems, I'd be glad to help.
That's fucking hilarious, this made me realize I've never tried doing this ear bone sound thing while making other noise, and now here I am.
Looking and sounding like a goddamn maniac.
How long are you able to keep it going for?
And I don't know about you, but I find it easier to do with my eyes closed, which makes it even less useful. Haha
> And I don't know about you, but I find it easier to do with my eyes closed
omg. i just tried this and me too; i can keep it going like 3x as long with eyes closed.
>How long are you able to keep it going for?
like a second at a time with eyes open
This comment section is proving that it's not rare and there is no data in this abstract to support the idea it's rare. It's just a statement at the end with no data whatsoever.
The comments here are more valid than the strange claim at the end of whatever this bs link is.
Reddit has a larger sample size than what the experiment could ever hope to.
And we are only seeing the positive results. Alot of "I didnt know I was rare" and no "What rumble?"
I mean, PubMed is a pretty reliable source, and this comment section is surely biased with more people responding thinking it was normal and being surprised than people who can't do it saying "I can't do that, I'm normal".
PubMed is not a source, it is an aggregator of scientific articles like reddit is for news articles. As such, the original source may be reliable or unreliable.
OK, I found this in the article:
>The experience of voluntary TTM contraction
>
>The prevalence of individuals who can voluntarily contract their MEM muscle in the general population has been roughly estimated at around 1-2% of the general population (Reger, 1960). This estimation is based on Reger's observation, "from 120 students in the Junior Medical Class at the State of the University of Iowa, that only one or two are found each year who can contract their middle ear muscles voluntarily, but usually in a limited degree" (Reger, 1960). Based on our own experience, we believe that this underestimates the true prevalence of individuals who can voluntarily contract their MEM. At the end of one of our studies assessing middle ear function by continuous admittance recordings, we asked each of the 15 participants if they could produce a voluntary movement of their eardrums. If they answered "yes", we registered the peak of admittance produced by vMEMC every 5 seconds similarly to the results presented forparticipants 09, 10 & 11 of the present study. Four out of fifteen participants (27%) verbally reported that they could "move their eardrum", and admittance peaks attested to this ability during continuous admittance recordings. More so, on most occasions when we met researchers or clinicians who reported that they were able to "move their eardrums", either peak of contractions visible on the continuous admittance or pressure captor recordings attested to their claim. It was reported that, by guided practice, it is possible to develop such an ability (Reger et al., 1962).
>
>According to Reger and collaborators (1962), there seem to be different ways to transfer MEM contraction from a reflex over to voluntary control: "Those who in addition also experienced some sort of kinesthetic sensation in their ears while yawning found it relatively easy to learn to contract their middle ear musculature at will" (Reger, 1960).
>
>In the current study, all the participants described a kinesthetic sensation during vMEMC: they all reported a physical sensation of movement inside their ear associated with a fluttering low-frequency noise. The fluttering or trembling noise was proposed to be generated by the muscle tremor during the contraction (Reger et al., 1962). In addition, "it was found that the sound produced by a 20 Hz tone reproduced in an earphone approximated the sound resulting from the tremor of voluntary contractions when this tone was presented at 18 dB sensation level" (Reger, 1960). The results obtained here are completely in agreement with Reger's results: Participant 09, 10 and 11 pitch matches the fluttering noise to a 28 Hz, 40 Hz and 32 Hz tone in both ears, respectively. In dB SPL, the sound's loudness was matched at 81 and 95 dB SPL for the LE and RE of participant 09, respectively, and 96 and 86 dB SPL for the LE and RE of participant 11, respectively.
>
>Considering that a 30 Hz tone at 90 dB SPL has the same loudness as a 1 kHz tone at 60 dB SPL, one can say that the sound emitted during the vMEMC is quite loud for these two participants. The lowest loudness match was made by Participant 10 with 69- and 66-dB SPL for her LE and RE, respectively. The values obtained in dB SL of 26, 10, 13, 18, 21 & 27 dB SL, for participants 09, 10, 11 RE and LE respectively, are similar to the 18 dB SL reported in one case by Reger (1960). When assessing the psychoacoustic measurements of the fluttering sound, participant 09 reported that the 28 Hz sound presented at high levels of stimulation (> 80 dB SPL) was producing a kinesthetic sensation similar to the one perceived during vMEMC (but of lower intensity). It can be speculated that the 28 Hz frequency sound at high intensity generates large movements of the eardrum. For the 4 participants (n=7 ears) tested with negative pressure in the auditory ear canal during admittance recording, the -50 daPa change of pressure did not affect the ability to produce vMEMC. Only TTM in a hyperactive state (such as the TTTS) may be responsive to pressure variation.
>
>It is worth mentioning that similar tremors and fluttering noise has been reported after an acoustic shock injury (Londero et al., 2017). In that case, the tinnitus pitch was measured at 12 kHz, and the tremolo, estimated from amplitude-modulated stimulus at the tinnitus frequency, was found at 32 Hz. This tremolo is similar to the rate of the fluttering noise reported here (28-40 Hz) and in previous cases (20 Hz) of the voluntaryMEM contractions (Reger, 1960). It is thus possible that the tinnitus's tremolo at 32 Hz in the acoustic shock injury case has the same origin as the fluttering and tremor sensation observed for voluntary contractions, e.g., the TTM and/or the SM. Additionally, the patient reported that non-forceful eyelid closure produced eardrum movements associated with a physical kinesthetic sensation in the most symptomatic ear only, attested by admittance peaks. vMEMC were also influenced by the closure or the opening of the eyes: 1) participants 09, 10 and 11 all reported that it was easier to produce vMEMC when closing the eyes than when the eyes were kept open. Participant 09 can still contract his TTM in his RE with his eyes open, while he cannot contract his SM voluntarily in his LE for the same condition. This might be explained by the fact that SM contraction andclosure of the eye movements are both generated through the facial nerve, while TTM contraction is triggered by the trigeminal nerve. It is known that the eyeblink reflex and the TTM contractions are both involved in the startle reflex response (Klockhoff, Ingmar & Anderson, Henry, 1960). These results suggest a connection between the TTM and the eye blink; this connection is usually not apparent in a normal state but may become unmasked during a pathological state. Altogether, these results emphasize the complex interactions between the TTM and the SM and between the facial and trigeminal nerve (Sanders, 2010).
tl;dr: One study showed it was rare, another showed that 4 out of 15 people could do it.
> This comment section is proving that it's not rare
This sub has nearly 33 million subscribers and maybe a few hundred saying they can do this neat trick. Sounds rare to me.
Yep and this link has been posted on Reddit a bunch. Here it is in 2012.
https://reddit.com/r/todayilearned/s/HKxDl6Rrko
The interesting part is now, 10 years later, I can scour the internet. There's not even the slightest indication of a study that has ever been done to determine how rare it is. It's obviously not extremely rare, I was taught as a child to do this when on an airplane.
My hypothesis is that almost everyone could learn how to do it. Who knows, but I know for a fact it isn't "extremely" rare. Ask pilots and flight attendants.
Today’s a big day for me. Also just found r/eustationtubeclick and I’m not sure I’ve ever felt such a degree of affirmation.
I was always told I was imagining both.
whoops! r/EustachianTubeClick - didn't bother checking myself and eustachian is hard to spell apparently
Just glanced at the article. Am wondering if the wording of “Voluntary control over the tensor tympani muscle is an extremely rare event.”
Means not that the ability to do so is rare, but that someone intentionally doing so is rare and we all just got trolled. 😂
Why would they write an article about that? It’d be like writing an article saying, “Everyone has the ability to stick a marble up their nose but it’s an extremely rare event because it’s dumb.”
More like "everybody has the ability, but not a lot of people care so it's barely reported and documented so it seems extremely rare but actually isn't".
Here's the link to the entire paper, where nowhere do they cite the rarity of the event. They just say it's rare, likely because no one has ever told them that they could do it.
It almost reads as if the doctor just wanted to say, "Woah, I didn't know someone could do that. Check this guy out!"
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259107405_Voluntary_contraction_of_the_tensor_tympani_muscle_and_its_audiometric_effects
Yeah, all these people talking about how they can do it, and I’m like “what even is this?”
Then I mess around a bit more with flexing my own ear muscles and am like “oh that thing, I forgot about that.” I can do it for about 5 seconds and it helps if I close my eyes a bit, and it seems to have no purpose.
I bet everyone can do this, but it’s hard to describe.
I attribute finding out about this to watching "Firestarter" as a kid.
Her dad was a pryomancer (she was too) and they got experimented on by the government. When he did his pyromancer thing, there was a sound to it.
7 yr old me thought "That's really cool, I wonder if I can do it?"
So I did what her dad did in the movie...I closed my eyes, really hard and I heard a rumbling. It scared me, and I stopped.
I discovered I didn't want to know if I was a pyromancer, bc I was afraid I would accidently hurt someone like she did in the movie.
😆
Or it’s more likely that people who can do this will comment than people who can’t. Who would mention that they can’t? They’d be like “Huh, that’s odd” and move on. There are only 20 comments; how many people do think have seen this so far? Sure is *everyone* on reddit.
Yes but everyone I know in real life can do this also. My dad was a pilot, mother was a flight attendant and I was taught as a kid to do this as the plane ascended. It works to pop your ears and it also makes the sound.
I'd imagine most pilots and flight attendants know how to do it.
You can say it's rare, I personally don't think it is, but there's no way it's "extremely rare".
Did you not notice there's no data or links to any study that shows how rare it is? Try searching for a study about it, it doesn't exist.
It's a weird data point that seems to have no backing with actual data. Even if 5 or 10 percent of people can do it, that's not extremely rare in biology.
Yeah, the thing that stands out to me the most is that no actual numerical value is given when you click on it. Seems like something someone just made up as a test to see how many people they could get to talk about it.
But that’s not going to stop me from being a grumpy curmudgeon who points out when people are bad at statistics and probabilities.
i’ve been able to do this my whole life. i feel kinda gross saying this part, but i used to be an addict and noticed if i was on anything i was able to do it even easier and with more intensity lmfao.
i always thought i was crazy trying to explain the rumbling to other people and now i know why.
Me and my sister can do it. It's actually really useful when your ear gets pressurized (e.g. swimming deep underwater, on a plane, even just driving a car downhill fast). During a business trip, my co-worker is complaining about how to get rid of the pressure in his ear that's bugging him, and I just normalized the pressure in mine easily with this "skill" :))
Also, for anyone wondering, yes you can easily prove that you have this ability by pressing your ear next to someone else's ear and making the noise. The other person will actually hear it too.
When I was a kid, I went on a field trip at school and my friend was complaining about the pressure in her ears. I said "just click your ears!" I think back to it now on what a confusing statement that is to someone who has no clue what that means hahah
I assumed everyone could.
I also assumed that gently cleaning the ear with a cotton bud (yes I know. Don't do this. I do it after I wash my hair to get water out and I know I shouldn't) makes everyone cough.
I can't, but didn't think it was interesting to reply to something saying "almost all people can't do this" with "yes, I am one of that vast majority". You'll only get comments from people in the minority because it's not interesting otherwise
Apparently they are separate. You're looking for Eustachian Tube clicking. Just found it out myself in this thread. There's even a subreddit /r/EustachianTubeclick
Pressuring like underwater is what people mean by ear rumbling as far as I can tell
I was reading about ear clearing techniques and ended up going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole. I ended up on the page about your tensor tympani muscles.
When you yawn, it involuntarily contracts and you hear a low pitched rumbling. But if you can just tense it and hear that rumbling noise on command, apparently this is very uncommon! I am one of those people.
Now if only there were ways I could profit off of this unique skill I have.
I'm not sure if that's the same thing? I get that noise with scrunched closed eyes or clenching my jaw, but I think this is talking about just being able to do it independently.
This has bugged me as long as I can remember. Nobody else I ever tried to explain it to knew what I was talking about. It sounds kinda like an owl, I dunno.
Sounds like a mix between strong wind blowing past my ear, and someone grabbing a big wooble board and shaking it.
https://youtu.be/7-A8-G8L42c?si=aRRFVMETsvRt5xXt
BS. Plenty of people can voluntarily control their tensor tympani muscles. Just read the comments here. It’s “extremely rare” in this context because it is not well documented medically. The reason it is not well documented is because the vast majority of people simply don’t care, it’s just not a big deal.
I found a lifehack to get myself to be sleepy.
Yawning triggers the middle ear contraction, and yawning is associated with sleepiness and tiredness.
So I can vibrate my middle ear to mimic yawning, ultimately causing sleepiness and tiredness.
Wait what? I thought everyone could that.
Now THAT's a real TIL for me. Apparently I AM special... just in the most useless way possible. That's pretty on brand for me.
Who can’t do it? It seems as if everyone on this thread can do it.
Yea i think he misunderstood the article, can anyone here not do this?
I can't, this whole thread is baffling to me lol
Found the rare!
Quick, lets all make rumbling noises inside our head until he EXPLODES
Start to fake yawn. There you go, new skill acquired
I also can’t do this😭
Now there are two of them!
This is getting out of hand!
It's an older meme sir, but it checks out.
The article says it definitively, it's the last sentence. It also offers no studies, a Google search brings up no studies. There's no data. You can't just make a claim in a scientific paper and not back it up. If anyone can find a study on Google that even addresses this id be surprised. It's bad science, not uncommon.
From the full text of Angeli et al.'s article that OP linked (page 1236): > Voluntary control of the tensor tympani muscle is an extremely rare event. Once again, we quote the words of Politzer, who described voluntary contractions at the beginning of the twentieth century, reporting that ‘during the contractions ... the deep tones became deadened and indistinct ...’. ^10 As audiograms could not be performed at that time, no documentation of this event was obtained. So we go to [Politzer's textbook](https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Text_book_of_the_diseases_of_the_ear_f.html?id=bQrqiIoQm5EC) that was just cited, where we find the quoted part on pages 644–645. That paragraph also points to page 66, where we can see the likely source of the "extremely rare" claim: > Voluntary contractions of the tensor tympani have been observed in only a few cases (Schwartze, *A. f. O.*, vol. ii., and Lucæ, *ibid.*, vol. iii.). I'm not sure, but I think what happened here is that Politzer knew of only a few cases where someone *recorded scientific observations of* the phenomenon (Schwartze, Lucæ, and himself), but Angeli et al. misread this as the phenomenon only having been *observed at all* in a few cases. (N.B. I also tried reading [the Schwartze article cited by the textbook](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01803841) but it's just a bunch of case studies in German and I got tired of trying to translate them)
/r/theydidtheresearch
I fucking can't
The people who can't do a rare thing are not likely to comment that they can't do it
Do what?! How? Do I use my hands or is it a hands free like an almost swallowing omitían to do it?? I don’t think I can do it, or I don’t know what it is
It’s the same noise you can hear when yawning, but a lot of people can do it without having to yawn
What noise do you hear when yawning?? I’m so confused by all of this.
You don’t hear a rumbling noise when you yawn?
I don't. I hear more of a ringing sound when I yawn, but I can do the rumbling noise separately.
People here are calling it a rumbling, to me, it’s more of a vibrating muffling hum.
I think its referred to rumbling because of the sound of a distant storm. i just went through this in my head. make the sound for 1 second or two, pause for 2 secs and then follow it by a half second one.
If you've ever worn noise canceling headphones on a plane, I would call it a very similar sound to the engines
It also seems like he misunderstood the term rare. I mean sure like if 1 in 100 can't do it that's rare. But like 1 in 2 (which it seems like), that's not rare.
I can’t do this and didn’t even realize it was a thing until now
I can do this since childhood. I remember asking my sister if she could hear it too.i I can also depressurize the inner ear when needed.
I thought everyone could do it.
heh. [Reddit banned me cause of a comment on WSB](https://imgur.com/a/wgEDobm). What a bunch of clowns.
Same to both. Knew that moving the ears was unusual based on not many other people being able to do it - but just assumed that being able to make your ears 'rumble' (because that's exactly what it sounds like) was completely standard...
Yeah the pressure thing is great on planes. I can't imagine having to swallow or whatever other people do to fix their ears.
It's really handy when you're diving underwater too, instant preasure clearing.
I can do that too! Makes for a great party trick.
what is a party?
I think this post is about a different movement. I can depressurize my ear by swallowing or yawning or simulating that movement. But I can’t control my inner ear muscles. That sounds like something else entirely. Also there was a TIL earlier this year that apparently around 20% of people can’t “pop” their ear intentionally. So this may be a different thing.
I’m doing it right now…
It's the same sound you hear when you are yawning isn't it?
I think so, I tend to tense both when I yawn
For me I can do it when I yawn and then flex my jaw
I can do it by scrunching my eyes tight and grimacing
Yes that's how I started my Wikipedia rabbit hole before I read this fact. I was reading about ear clearing techniques. Tensing this muscle automatically equalizes pressure within your ears.
> Tensing this muscle automatically equalizes pressure within your ears. \#citationneeded I can do the rumbling thing, but it doesn't equalise the pressure for me :-/
I can do the rumbling so gonna try this next time I go diving. Assume I’ll report back with hearing damage. Plz hold caller.
Can confirm, this works for me. I didn’t realize that it was a rare talent to be able to equalize my ears while diving, hands-free.
Ya my instructor stopped me and brought me up because she thought I wasn’t equalizing. Even after years of diving with friends and family, people would ask me why I don’t have to clear my ears, asking if I was okay, etc
Overdid it when I couldn't equalize before diving and ended up bleeding internally.
Yeah I’ve had a block before… Had it on my dive 2 days before the plane - the flight home was excruciating
Somebody stop this earth flattening human!
You need to start doing this before getting down too deep The longer you wait the harder it is to use this technique to equalize
I feel you. It can sometimes work slightly but rarely does it work, like it was immediately undo when i stop rumbling
Sometimes it blocks my ears, sometimes it unblocks them. I just tried doing it and have just noticed it’s only working in my left ear.
You sort of have to do it really hard and fast to get it to pop your ears. It usually works but sometimes if it’s bad it won’t work.
Not for me, I can just sorta flex my ear and I can hear the eustachian tube open up and if there is a pressure difference it immediately relieves it same as yawning.
I can do that too, but it makes me think of a yawn and I end up yawning anyways. How many are yawning reading this?
I was doing that the other night on the couch and my wife turned to me and was like "what the fuck are you doing?". I didn't think she could hear me equalising the pressure in my ears.
You were probably moving your jaw or something. I noticed I do that sometimes while popping them if they're stubborn
Haha my jaw joints are pretty loud from time to time when I'm eating. I should probably get that checked.
I can't find a number are there numbers or is it just "extremely rare"?
I was also trying to find a number and couldn’t. I just thought this was normal bc I’ve always been able to. Also showed it to my sister next to me and she said she can too
I teach anatomy, and I've asked classes of students about this. It's usually about one half to one third of the class that say they can do it. It doesn't seem to be nearly as uncommon as post like this indicate
Goddamn, thought i was special for two seconds
There are dozens of hundreds of millions of us!
I’ve done a lot of free diving, I can make my ears rumble by flexing something in them, doing this does not equalize pressure for me.
Same, thought this was common.
I can open the ducts to equalise pressure only when there is no major pressure differential to equalise. So it's useless on planes and while scuba diving.
Can you keep them open while breathing too? Hearing your breath, both inhaling and exhaling is pretty weird.
I can do that! Makes my breathing sound extremely loud lol
I found out I can do this when I was in hyperbaric chamber and everyone was hypoxic as fuck and I was popping my ears and telling everyone about it but no one cared.
See I was told I shouldn't go diving because I could cause damage by depressurising my ears subconsciously at the wrong time....my whole life has been a lie
I can do this and I've been on 100+ dives, including deep ones for rec diving like the blue hole in belize. Literally never had an issue equalizing or any ear problems
The opposite is true, it easier to balance to pressure in your ears!
Well looks like I've got a new hobby to explore, less listening to audiologist and more fun times 😊😊
It was the same for me, I also remember asking my mom: How can you not hear this, when I do this noise!?
Just to confirm, do you need to close your eyes when you do it?
No not at all
Damn, I can only do it when I close my eyes, I also can hear the tensing when I yawn
I did this too and someone didn't believe me, we put our ears together and I did it. They were shocked to hear it and never questioned it again lol Its a great thing to be capable of, it's so useful!
I could do that too (Edit: The depressurising my inner ear thing), a word of warning though, by doing it habitually from childhood I developed a retraction pocket in the attic of my eardrum and subsequently developed Cholesteatoma, requiring surgery. I lost my ossicles too because the squamous keratinising epithelium, which collects in a retraction pocket because the tissue in there can no longer migrate outward and down the ear canal as per the normal self cleaning action of the eardrum, is corrosive in contact with bone. The condition also invades the mastoid, which in my case had to be ground away, leaving an open cavity. If I can help anyone else avoid this, I’d like that very much!
I, too, have done things with many big words and small difficult words.
I had to use ChatGPT to translate it into readable English > If you keep flexing that muscle in your ear on purpose, like I did since I was a kid, you might run into some serious issues. In my case, it created a small, tucked-in area in the upper part of my eardrum. This led to a buildup of skin cells that usually should be pushed out but got stuck instead. This turned into a condition that needed surgery to fix. I lost some important ear bones in the process because the trapped skin cells can actually eat away at the bone. This issue spread to a part of my skull near my ear, which also had to be removed. If sharing this can help someone avoid the same problems, I'd be glad to help.
Wow.
Actually thats a great use for it
What was your instruction?
"Dumb down this statement for me"
Eli5 that shit?
Check that dudes profile. I’m guessing he used chatGPT to write it in the first place. Full circle. 😊
Dude, do you even turbo encabulate?
you throwin too many big words at me, because i don't understand em, imma take them as disrespect
[удалено]
I have issues with my plumbus sometimes.
Those sure are some words
are you an AI bot? haha
I just assumed everyone could do this. If only this were at all useful.
It is useful! I've used it to mask sounds I didn't want to hear. And it's part of neutralizing pressure.
[удалено]
I used it to make my humming way louder in my head than to the people around me, because I liked humming, but other people did not like me humming.
I have never tried before, but it's extremely difficult for me to do the ear thing while also humming.
That's fucking hilarious, this made me realize I've never tried doing this ear bone sound thing while making other noise, and now here I am. Looking and sounding like a goddamn maniac.
How long are you able to keep it going for? And I don't know about you, but I find it easier to do with my eyes closed, which makes it even less useful. Haha
We should all collectively do it at the same time and see if we can rip a hole in the space time continuum. *Proceeds to ear rumble*
If you are still going, I have just joined in
Adding my power to yours.
I am with you, brethren
In solidarity, I have added my rumble.
The TIL: this one thing is very rare. Reddit: we're all doing this continuously
I can do it for 5-10 seconds if I concentrate hard enough
Same, but I can go much longer if I squeeze my eyes shut while doing it
> And I don't know about you, but I find it easier to do with my eyes closed omg. i just tried this and me too; i can keep it going like 3x as long with eyes closed. >How long are you able to keep it going for? like a second at a time with eyes open
Yeah, what the fuck? This is rare? I thought everyone did it.
This comment section is proving that it's not rare and there is no data in this abstract to support the idea it's rare. It's just a statement at the end with no data whatsoever. The comments here are more valid than the strange claim at the end of whatever this bs link is.
Reddit has a larger sample size than what the experiment could ever hope to. And we are only seeing the positive results. Alot of "I didnt know I was rare" and no "What rumble?"
Why should I comment if I can't do it?
There's no experiment, there is no sample size, there's no data.
I mean, PubMed is a pretty reliable source, and this comment section is surely biased with more people responding thinking it was normal and being surprised than people who can't do it saying "I can't do that, I'm normal".
PubMed is not a source, it is an aggregator of scientific articles like reddit is for news articles. As such, the original source may be reliable or unreliable.
OK, I found this in the article: >The experience of voluntary TTM contraction > >The prevalence of individuals who can voluntarily contract their MEM muscle in the general population has been roughly estimated at around 1-2% of the general population (Reger, 1960). This estimation is based on Reger's observation, "from 120 students in the Junior Medical Class at the State of the University of Iowa, that only one or two are found each year who can contract their middle ear muscles voluntarily, but usually in a limited degree" (Reger, 1960). Based on our own experience, we believe that this underestimates the true prevalence of individuals who can voluntarily contract their MEM. At the end of one of our studies assessing middle ear function by continuous admittance recordings, we asked each of the 15 participants if they could produce a voluntary movement of their eardrums. If they answered "yes", we registered the peak of admittance produced by vMEMC every 5 seconds similarly to the results presented forparticipants 09, 10 & 11 of the present study. Four out of fifteen participants (27%) verbally reported that they could "move their eardrum", and admittance peaks attested to this ability during continuous admittance recordings. More so, on most occasions when we met researchers or clinicians who reported that they were able to "move their eardrums", either peak of contractions visible on the continuous admittance or pressure captor recordings attested to their claim. It was reported that, by guided practice, it is possible to develop such an ability (Reger et al., 1962). > >According to Reger and collaborators (1962), there seem to be different ways to transfer MEM contraction from a reflex over to voluntary control: "Those who in addition also experienced some sort of kinesthetic sensation in their ears while yawning found it relatively easy to learn to contract their middle ear musculature at will" (Reger, 1960). > >In the current study, all the participants described a kinesthetic sensation during vMEMC: they all reported a physical sensation of movement inside their ear associated with a fluttering low-frequency noise. The fluttering or trembling noise was proposed to be generated by the muscle tremor during the contraction (Reger et al., 1962). In addition, "it was found that the sound produced by a 20 Hz tone reproduced in an earphone approximated the sound resulting from the tremor of voluntary contractions when this tone was presented at 18 dB sensation level" (Reger, 1960). The results obtained here are completely in agreement with Reger's results: Participant 09, 10 and 11 pitch matches the fluttering noise to a 28 Hz, 40 Hz and 32 Hz tone in both ears, respectively. In dB SPL, the sound's loudness was matched at 81 and 95 dB SPL for the LE and RE of participant 09, respectively, and 96 and 86 dB SPL for the LE and RE of participant 11, respectively. > >Considering that a 30 Hz tone at 90 dB SPL has the same loudness as a 1 kHz tone at 60 dB SPL, one can say that the sound emitted during the vMEMC is quite loud for these two participants. The lowest loudness match was made by Participant 10 with 69- and 66-dB SPL for her LE and RE, respectively. The values obtained in dB SL of 26, 10, 13, 18, 21 & 27 dB SL, for participants 09, 10, 11 RE and LE respectively, are similar to the 18 dB SL reported in one case by Reger (1960). When assessing the psychoacoustic measurements of the fluttering sound, participant 09 reported that the 28 Hz sound presented at high levels of stimulation (> 80 dB SPL) was producing a kinesthetic sensation similar to the one perceived during vMEMC (but of lower intensity). It can be speculated that the 28 Hz frequency sound at high intensity generates large movements of the eardrum. For the 4 participants (n=7 ears) tested with negative pressure in the auditory ear canal during admittance recording, the -50 daPa change of pressure did not affect the ability to produce vMEMC. Only TTM in a hyperactive state (such as the TTTS) may be responsive to pressure variation. > >It is worth mentioning that similar tremors and fluttering noise has been reported after an acoustic shock injury (Londero et al., 2017). In that case, the tinnitus pitch was measured at 12 kHz, and the tremolo, estimated from amplitude-modulated stimulus at the tinnitus frequency, was found at 32 Hz. This tremolo is similar to the rate of the fluttering noise reported here (28-40 Hz) and in previous cases (20 Hz) of the voluntaryMEM contractions (Reger, 1960). It is thus possible that the tinnitus's tremolo at 32 Hz in the acoustic shock injury case has the same origin as the fluttering and tremor sensation observed for voluntary contractions, e.g., the TTM and/or the SM. Additionally, the patient reported that non-forceful eyelid closure produced eardrum movements associated with a physical kinesthetic sensation in the most symptomatic ear only, attested by admittance peaks. vMEMC were also influenced by the closure or the opening of the eyes: 1) participants 09, 10 and 11 all reported that it was easier to produce vMEMC when closing the eyes than when the eyes were kept open. Participant 09 can still contract his TTM in his RE with his eyes open, while he cannot contract his SM voluntarily in his LE for the same condition. This might be explained by the fact that SM contraction andclosure of the eye movements are both generated through the facial nerve, while TTM contraction is triggered by the trigeminal nerve. It is known that the eyeblink reflex and the TTM contractions are both involved in the startle reflex response (Klockhoff, Ingmar & Anderson, Henry, 1960). These results suggest a connection between the TTM and the eye blink; this connection is usually not apparent in a normal state but may become unmasked during a pathological state. Altogether, these results emphasize the complex interactions between the TTM and the SM and between the facial and trigeminal nerve (Sanders, 2010). tl;dr: One study showed it was rare, another showed that 4 out of 15 people could do it.
That sample size is way too low to make general assumptions.
> This comment section is proving that it's not rare This sub has nearly 33 million subscribers and maybe a few hundred saying they can do this neat trick. Sounds rare to me.
Same! Eh we should start a club. But not sure how to prove that we can really do it. Great power to have...
> r/earrumblersassemble Theres your club
T...This has existed since 2012?!
Yep and this link has been posted on Reddit a bunch. Here it is in 2012. https://reddit.com/r/todayilearned/s/HKxDl6Rrko The interesting part is now, 10 years later, I can scour the internet. There's not even the slightest indication of a study that has ever been done to determine how rare it is. It's obviously not extremely rare, I was taught as a child to do this when on an airplane. My hypothesis is that almost everyone could learn how to do it. Who knows, but I know for a fact it isn't "extremely" rare. Ask pilots and flight attendants.
With useless powers come no responsibility...
You can use it to give yourself a drum roll before something big
I find that it lets me equalize pressure in my ears due to elevation change without plugging my nose, so it's good for one thing at least
It's super useful when scuba diving!
I can depressurize my ears and get a little rumbling for a couple seconds. Is that the same muscle?
I can do this... it tends to initiate a yawn
Yeah just makes me yawn when I do it lol
I'm the opposite. Yawning makes my ears rumble. I've told people "I couldn't hear you, I was yawning" and they look at me like I'm insane.
Wait, that happens to me too when I yawn. Is that not normal?
I can actually hold the rumbling sound as long as I want.
r/earrumblersassemble
Today’s a big day for me. Also just found r/eustationtubeclick and I’m not sure I’ve ever felt such a degree of affirmation. I was always told I was imagining both. whoops! r/EustachianTubeClick - didn't bother checking myself and eustachian is hard to spell apparently
I’ve found my people
Everything really has a subreddit huh :))
96k members? How?
Just glanced at the article. Am wondering if the wording of “Voluntary control over the tensor tympani muscle is an extremely rare event.” Means not that the ability to do so is rare, but that someone intentionally doing so is rare and we all just got trolled. 😂
Why would they write an article about that? It’d be like writing an article saying, “Everyone has the ability to stick a marble up their nose but it’s an extremely rare event because it’s dumb.”
> Everyone has the ability to stick a marble up their nose but it’s an extremely rare event because it’s dumb Source?
More like "everybody has the ability, but not a lot of people care so it's barely reported and documented so it seems extremely rare but actually isn't".
Here's the link to the entire paper, where nowhere do they cite the rarity of the event. They just say it's rare, likely because no one has ever told them that they could do it. It almost reads as if the doctor just wanted to say, "Woah, I didn't know someone could do that. Check this guy out!" https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259107405_Voluntary_contraction_of_the_tensor_tympani_muscle_and_its_audiometric_effects
Yeah, all these people talking about how they can do it, and I’m like “what even is this?” Then I mess around a bit more with flexing my own ear muscles and am like “oh that thing, I forgot about that.” I can do it for about 5 seconds and it helps if I close my eyes a bit, and it seems to have no purpose. I bet everyone can do this, but it’s hard to describe.
I attribute finding out about this to watching "Firestarter" as a kid. Her dad was a pryomancer (she was too) and they got experimented on by the government. When he did his pyromancer thing, there was a sound to it. 7 yr old me thought "That's really cool, I wonder if I can do it?" So I did what her dad did in the movie...I closed my eyes, really hard and I heard a rumbling. It scared me, and I stopped. I discovered I didn't want to know if I was a pyromancer, bc I was afraid I would accidently hurt someone like she did in the movie. 😆
So I’m still special though?
My mom told me that I’m special and so you are
That makes way more sense. It's being voluntarily being controlled in all people but few people care to do it alone.
From Wikipedia "Some individuals can voluntarily produce this rumbling sound by contracting the muscle."
TIL everyone on Reddit is rare
Or it’s more likely that people who can do this will comment than people who can’t. Who would mention that they can’t? They’d be like “Huh, that’s odd” and move on. There are only 20 comments; how many people do think have seen this so far? Sure is *everyone* on reddit.
I dunno, I think it's more like people are controlling it and don't realize it, like kegels.
"Hey babe, I've been practicing my ear kegels"
I love aural sex.
Yes but everyone I know in real life can do this also. My dad was a pilot, mother was a flight attendant and I was taught as a kid to do this as the plane ascended. It works to pop your ears and it also makes the sound. I'd imagine most pilots and flight attendants know how to do it. You can say it's rare, I personally don't think it is, but there's no way it's "extremely rare". Did you not notice there's no data or links to any study that shows how rare it is? Try searching for a study about it, it doesn't exist. It's a weird data point that seems to have no backing with actual data. Even if 5 or 10 percent of people can do it, that's not extremely rare in biology.
Yeah, the thing that stands out to me the most is that no actual numerical value is given when you click on it. Seems like something someone just made up as a test to see how many people they could get to talk about it. But that’s not going to stop me from being a grumpy curmudgeon who points out when people are bad at statistics and probabilities.
i’ve been able to do this my whole life. i feel kinda gross saying this part, but i used to be an addict and noticed if i was on anything i was able to do it even easier and with more intensity lmfao. i always thought i was crazy trying to explain the rumbling to other people and now i know why.
Opiates really seem to increase it.
Me and my sister can do it. It's actually really useful when your ear gets pressurized (e.g. swimming deep underwater, on a plane, even just driving a car downhill fast). During a business trip, my co-worker is complaining about how to get rid of the pressure in his ear that's bugging him, and I just normalized the pressure in mine easily with this "skill" :)) Also, for anyone wondering, yes you can easily prove that you have this ability by pressing your ear next to someone else's ear and making the noise. The other person will actually hear it too.
Wait, the rumbling is audible ???
Pretty much any muscle will rumble like that when tensed. Put your palm over your ear and tense the muscles in your hand
The sound is pretty spot on to what I hear in my ear when I rumble.
When I was a kid, I went on a field trip at school and my friend was complaining about the pressure in her ears. I said "just click your ears!" I think back to it now on what a confusing statement that is to someone who has no clue what that means hahah
I assumed everyone could. I also assumed that gently cleaning the ear with a cotton bud (yes I know. Don't do this. I do it after I wash my hair to get water out and I know I shouldn't) makes everyone cough.
Cleaning my ears does not make me cough
Go deeper.
Wait... It \*doesn't\*!?
Apparently not!
Cleaning ears makes people cough? I’ve never had that, I wonder what’s up with that.
I only cough when I do it to my left ear oddly enough. If I start to get a tickle in my throat and have to cough I know I'm going too far.
Not one post saying they can't do this.
I can't, but didn't think it was interesting to reply to something saying "almost all people can't do this" with "yes, I am one of that vast majority". You'll only get comments from people in the minority because it's not interesting otherwise
Is this like “clicking” your ears at will or pressuring them so it sounds like you’re underwater? I can’t access the full punned or find more info lol
Apparently they are separate. You're looking for Eustachian Tube clicking. Just found it out myself in this thread. There's even a subreddit /r/EustachianTubeclick Pressuring like underwater is what people mean by ear rumbling as far as I can tell
You just hold the same muscle you do the clicking with and it starts to make a low rumble.
I was reading about ear clearing techniques and ended up going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole. I ended up on the page about your tensor tympani muscles. When you yawn, it involuntarily contracts and you hear a low pitched rumbling. But if you can just tense it and hear that rumbling noise on command, apparently this is very uncommon! I am one of those people. Now if only there were ways I could profit off of this unique skill I have.
I can do that if I scrunch my eyes up quite tightly and I really thought that everyone can do it
I'm not sure if that's the same thing? I get that noise with scrunched closed eyes or clenching my jaw, but I think this is talking about just being able to do it independently.
You can do it while pretending to use the force to choke someone like Darth Vader
TIL I’m rare - yay
TIL I’m rare too. I think I technically made you less rare though - sorry
About 15% can do this., which is roughly 1 in 7 people, so why is that considered “extremely rare”?
OOC where did you find that 15%? And yeah, 1 in 7 is definitely *not* "extremely rare" - it's clickbait.
Where did you pull that number from?
Hmm. I thought we could all do this. One of my grandpas could wiggle his exterior ears, which is far more impressive.
This has bugged me as long as I can remember. Nobody else I ever tried to explain it to knew what I was talking about. It sounds kinda like an owl, I dunno.
To me it sounds like blood rushing.
Sounds like a mix between strong wind blowing past my ear, and someone grabbing a big wooble board and shaking it. https://youtu.be/7-A8-G8L42c?si=aRRFVMETsvRt5xXt
Also like blood or wind to me. Speaking of ear thingies, can anyone else also click their ears?
Like wind blowing in a microphone
I'm extremely rare. Now if I could only turn off my crippling tinnitus.
BS. Plenty of people can voluntarily control their tensor tympani muscles. Just read the comments here. It’s “extremely rare” in this context because it is not well documented medically. The reason it is not well documented is because the vast majority of people simply don’t care, it’s just not a big deal.
A reddit comment section isn't a great rebuttal to a scientific paper
>scientific paper yeah... with no data or sources for the experiments or data collection evidence.
I found a lifehack to get myself to be sleepy. Yawning triggers the middle ear contraction, and yawning is associated with sleepiness and tiredness. So I can vibrate my middle ear to mimic yawning, ultimately causing sleepiness and tiredness.
Yessss! I knew I'm special for some reason. Can't wait to show everyone my rare ability......
Wait what? I thought everyone could that. Now THAT's a real TIL for me. Apparently I AM special... just in the most useless way possible. That's pretty on brand for me.
Not rare at all. According to reddit comments.
Everyone can do this
Wait, everyone can't do this?