The term tympanophonia comes from the Greek words tumpanon (kettledrum) and phone (sound, voice). It translates loosely as 'eardrum sound'. Tympanophonia is also known as autophonia, although the latter term is more properly used to emphasize a different aspect of certain otolog-ical conditions. The Graeco-German neologism Autophonie was coined in or shortly before 1868 by the Viennese otologist Josef Gruber (18271900) to denote the hyperperception ofone's own voice that may accompany disorders of the ear. Gruber introduced the term Tympanophonie to denote the objective amplification of the voice's volume - as recorded by means of auditory auscultation - in disorders of the ear. Today the two terms are used interchangeably, and their definition has been expanded to include the increased hearing of one's own voice, breath sounds, arterial murmurs, and other noises of the upper body that may occur in diseases of the middle ear and nasal fossae, and after rapid weight loss.
References
Finsten, R.M., Faguet, R.A. (1983). Autopho-nia associated with an atypical eating disorder. Journalof Clinical Psychiatry, 44, 191.
Gruber, J. (1868). Ueber Autophonie und Tympanophonie. Beitrag zur Auscultation des Gehörorgans. Monatsschrift für Ohrenkrankheiten, 8, 123-125.
Dictionary of Hallucinations. J.D. Blom. 2010.