Why does covering your ears make your own speech louder?

In daily life

I wonder if you have noticed a strange phenomenon.

Cover your ears and listen to yourself talking

The sound is louder than when you don't cover your ears

What is the reason for this?

Let us reveal the secret to you below!

It turns out that the sound of one's own voice is louder when one covers one's ears than when one does not cover one's ears because the way sound is transmitted is different.

Let's first understand how we hear our own voice.

When our voice is emitted, it is conducted through the air:

Outer ear → middle ear → inner ear (lymph fluid produces vibration) → cochlear organ (completes the sound perception process) → auditory nerve (generates nerve impulses) → auditory center → cerebral cortex (integrates data and processes it), this is how you hear the sound.

If you cover your ears, you will hear the sound through bone conduction:

Skull → bony labyrinth → inner ear lymph → spiral organ → auditory nerve → auditory center of cerebral cortex.

In life, we hear sounds through two ways: air conduction and bone conduction. Air conduction will be mixed with some external noise, so the volume will be smaller. However, covering your ears only allows bone conduction without external noise, so the sound will be louder.

This article was reviewed by Tao Ning, PhD, Associate Professor at the National Institute