Dr. Jennifer Groh

you know, turning down the volume just before you speak so that you don't get blasted by the sound of your own voice.

If you think about it, like if I were speaking at this volume with my mouth this far away from my ear, like if I was speaking at this volume from here or somebody else was speaking at this volume from here, it'd be too loud.

You want somebody to speak a little more softly.

All the time.

Well, we're projecting it outward and our brain is turning down the volume in anticipation of what we're saying.

So it's a very, you know, potentially it could be a very precisely timed volume knob that is going with each little word that I say.

Probably.

We cannot.

And then the third thing is that this maybe goes back to the first point about the recording doesn't capture all of it, is that some of what we are picking up is actually through bone conduction.

You may have bone conduction headphones.

I certainly do.

These are headphones that they don't go over the ears.

They don't go in the ears.

They're usually positioned right in front of the ears, delivering the vibration signals to the bone right in front of your ear.

And that can get transmitted into your ears as well.

I have these.

Because it leaves my ears open so I can hear something else.

So it's safer if you're out exercising somewhere where there might be traffic or something like that.

Right.

I do think that there's concerns about just how much sound exposure people are accumulating.