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points by rhoohr 2 days ago | 0 comments
> What is it like to hear vocal folds vibrate?

I wouldn't normally describe hearing a voice as hearing "vibrations". Vibrations are indeed the physical basis of sound, and the auditory system detects changes in air pressure caused by them. But vibrations can also be perceived through touch, and the subjective experience of hearing is quite different from the tactile sensation of feeling something vibrate. When talking about feeling vibrations, I usually think of the touching sensation.

Still, both sensations originate from the same physical phenomenon. You can try to feel your own vocal chords vibrate by placing your fingers on your throat while humming. It's certainly a very different sensation, and touch generally conveys fewer acoustic details than typical hearing, but you're sensing the same underlying physical event.

One interesting example is Dani Valeska (Instagram: @daniivaleska), a Brazilian Sign Language interpreter whose husband is deaf (I couldn't find his name). She shares content about their experiences, and I remember seeing a video in which her husband used the vibrations of her voice, felt by touching her throat, to reproduce what she was saying. This resembles a technique called "tactiling", which has been studied as a tactile aid to speechreading (https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/tactiling-a-us...).

[–] Onavo 2 days ago
The essay is a little odd because the author mentioned that she was born with normal hearing.
[–] mi-rae 2 days ago
When I was very young, I had normal hearing, but I don’t remember any of the sounds I heard back then. I think I lost my hearing around first grade, which in Korea is around age seven. Until then, my hearing was normal, and that’s when I learned to speak. But these are such early childhood memories that I can’t really be sure. What did everything sound like back then...? I don’t know.

(Sorry if my last post seemed to have some mistakes. I was tired yesterday and didn’t review it carefully, so there were a few contradictions. I’m trying my best to write as accurately as possible)

[–] mebrainmush 2 days ago
Sounds like you might have auditory aphantasia. How's your minds eye?
[–] cgio 2 days ago
That’s where I was lost too. Maybe very young and has no memories?
[–] bitwize 2 days ago
Supposedly, the deaf-blind Helen Keller learned to speak clearly in the same way.
[–] q7m 2 days ago
The vocal vibrate primarily because of the Bernoulli effect and the over pressure of the lungs. Just vibrations alone, called the voice sources, carries almost none of the information that we use in speech. That information arises as the pressure wave goes up through the larynx tube and into the mouth (or up the nose in the case of nasals). It is possible to measure just the voice source by means of a laryngograph.