I’ve always learned it comes from damaged hair cells inside the ear, how could it be anything but physical? Very surprised it can be picked up with a microphone in an anechoic chamber though
It’s called objective tinnitus. Tinnitus can have different causes, the damaged hair cells one is the most common.
I was with you until: “[…] but it can also be heard by the examiner (eg, by placing a stethoscope over the patient’s external auditory canal).” and now I’m even more confused
The DC power supply inside your ears is only medium quality and so your preamp is prone to picking up coil whine.
I have a kind of tinnitus that comes and goes based on how stressed out the tendons in my neck and jaw are, on one side, after a pretty serious physical injury.
I can basically massage away my tinnitus a good deal of the time, its only on the side that got fucked up.
Beyond that, I actually have exceptionally good hearing (for my age at least), and I often hear things other people don’t even notice, yay autism!
Poorly shielded electronic devices go
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!Poorly shielded inductors in switch mode PSUs/old CRTs for me (Very common in older devices, low current causes the switching frequency to drop into the audible range.)
You can build your own tinnitus inducer with a cheapo 100kHz buck ic, put an air coil inductor on it, and then decrease the current until failure.
Let’s also not forget the dreaded ‘… what do you mean I need to replace the batteries in my smoke detector?’
Though, I don’t think you have to be autistic for that to be extremely annoying, lol.
About 2/3 of my family (including me) have the same thing, some kind of hereditary issue with the nerve that runs from the jaw up behind the ear. Accompanied by most of us also having jaws that don’t quite fit in their sockets properly and tend to pop and crunch from time to time.
Why would a damaged hair cell make noise?
Because they’re broken
They’re screaming
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
If you close your eyes tightly you can induce the perception of color. If you stand in a doorway and lift your arms to the side so that the backs of your hands are pressing against the inside of the door frame, keep pressing for 60 seconds, then step out of the doorway and relax your arms: it’ll feel like your arms are floating.
The body’s systems are complex and part of reliably filtering signal from noise in such systems is establishing a baseline while in a steady state. Our brains are pretty good at filtering out noise but the pressures or degradations which lead to tinnitus seem to trick the brain into accepting some noise as signal.
If you’re looking for a deep dive then the following paper does an excellent job of outling what we know and what our best guesses are so far: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306987724002718
It’s jargon-laden but nothing someone armed with a dictionary can’t handle. 🙂
Right, but I’m not talking about perceiving noise, I’m talking about creating noise.
Ah. My bad. That’s kind of covered indirectly within the third reference paper (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959438808000871) and more-so in this paper: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2724262
Part of the process for our hearing involves otoacoustic emission (wikipedia), i.e., creating sound. My arm-chair understanding is that we think this part of the process misbehaving is a main contributor for objective tinnitus and why we can record it under the right circumstances.
tl;dr: ear too loud.
Maybe it’s like the way microphones and speakers are basically the same hardware, with the cells surrounding the hair in your ear canal vibrating those hairs “out” at high frequency for some reason.
Somebody much smarter than me will be able provide answers!
The hair cell’s whole job is to send neuronal signal when there’s vibration at its specific frequency. It’s entirely conceivable that a cell would get stuck in the ‘send signal’ mode when damaged, just as it can go the other way and send no signal ever anymore.
Right, which would make the owner of the hair percieve a sound that isn’t happening. The novel part is other people being able to hear it too.
Mawp. Mawp. Mawp.
This is the one thing I don’t like about some doctors and scientists: they think they know everything, and in doing so they become lazy and dismissive (or they only care about money and fame). They should always be curious, and always seek to find the next truth, no matter what the general consensus is in the community. Good on De La Mata for challenging the status quo.
What the fuck are you talking about?
It was doctors and scientists that came up with the idea and experiment that recorded the tinnitus and proved it had a physical source.
some doctors and scientists
The person you are replying to very clearly did not mean all doctors and scientists.
Which is a weird thing to bring up when the topic is scientists who were curious and solved a problem.
OK, not like I brought it up. Go be aggressive somewhere else.
No dumbass, they’re explaining to you why it doesn’t matter if they only meant “some” scientists. Like sure, some scientists are corrupt. Some politicians are corrupt. Some priests raped kids. Not every one of them, but if you bring it up the implication is kind of that you’re suggesting that it applies to the story/topic at hand.
It’s the same logic and immigrants are lazy and stealing all the benefits of society.
That logic is: someone invented a stereotype and people ran with it instead of being curious and doing science
I took his comment to mean the people who accepted that tinnitus was not physical.
Rarely, the sound may be heard by someone other than the patient by using a stethoscope, in which case it is known as “objective tinnitus”. Occasionally, spontaneous otoacoustic emissions, sounds produced normally by the inner ear, may result in tinnitus.
It’s not ‘physical’ in most cases. Or rather, it’s not acoustic but electric instead.
that’s a good philosophy in general. but I’m practice, it’s hard.
for every million “that can’t be” theories only a handful pan out. doing every “stupid” experiment is practically impossible.
This is literally an example of a scientist being curious about something they don’t know and setting up an extremely far fetched experiment.
Mine doesn’t sound quite like that, but it did get a little better for a while after listening to that.
Holy shit mine too! Mines much higher pitch but it was also briefly relieved. Ima keep that video in my pocket…
I wonder if there’s a way to tune that to match and negate an individual’s sound waves…
Iirc white noise supposedly helps with tinnitus. If I’m not misremembering something.
Oh, I think I would go insane if I constantly had to hear something. It already weirds me out that people hear things that aren’t actually there and this is a thing that actually is.
It’s always there, but that doesn’t mean one constantly hears it. I’m listening to music a lot, so then I don’t hear it. When I skateboard or do any other sports I don’t hear it, et cetera. Only when it’s quiet I sometimes become aware of it, but because of habituation I usually unconsciously ignore it just as quickly. It does happen that sometimes in bed I keep focusing on it to the point it annoys me, but fortunately that’s rare. Not being able to experience absolute silence in a forest anymore disappoints me though; c’est la vie.
That being said, I’m probably in the camp of people whose condition is mild. It must indeed be horrible for people whose tinnitus overpowers all other sounds.
So its a real sound? Noise cancelling implants then?
i had decent pitch before my tinnitus, but it rings at a constant e8. now i have perfect pitch.
Nice ! that’s two octaves higher than my highest e on the guitar (first string, twelvth fret). I could definitely use this
tinnitus
Nice!
😅
now I have perfect pitch.
Nice !
I know, I know, I was just kidding 😉
alright. I was afraid I sounded like a dick to people who do have tinnitus
😄 You’re a good person
My tinnitus is at the very upper frequency range of my ability to hear, right around 13,000 Hz (I’m 60). Fortunately, I don’t notice it except in a quiet room.
extremely dumb question, but would a very loud 13kHz sound kill the cochlear cells that detect that specific frequency?
now we’re onto something. shoot that tinnitus dead with high frequency sound lasers
Nuke the tinnitus lol
Tinnitus is typically induced by exposure to loud noise in the first place, so your proposal could as well make it worse.
what if we make it even louder!!!
A few rock concerts should take care of that, then.
Makes it worse from my experience. Tends to deaden everything but the squeal
This was already known. Some forms of tinnitus are ‘real’
I got rid of my handheld game after I noticed my thumb was starting to twitch while I was at rest.
Apparently, the same thing can happen with ears.
This is quite the opposite of what the image macro says
According to the macro, the ear is actually producing sounds. Sounds are vibrations. Apparently, the ear continues to vibrate without stimulation, the same way my thumb kept moving even if there was no game.
How is it ‘the opposite?’
edit = nontechnical article. https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2024/06/09/recording-tinnitus-as-it-happens-for-art-and-science/
Yeah I didn’t get you right. Thanks for the explanation.
It’s all good.
Just another example of doctors not taking women seriously at first sadly. But at least she was vindicated.
I agree that that is a big problem in medicine, but how is this post an example of that? As far as I’m reading no-one was dismissing her claim of having tinnitus. They were just very surprised that it can apparently manifest as a physical sound, which was unexpected by both her and the scientists.
You’re right. I just got frustrated and commented without evidence.
I mean that’s fair. It is a frustrating subject after all
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The same could affect mens ears. As far as I’m aware there is a higher rate of tinnitus in men due to work related injuries. I’m sure they were not believed.
Pretty sure this isn’t the first time in history someone had this problem.
No, but women are MUCH more likely to have their symptoms dismissed as psychosomatic compared to men. Odds are good if you’re a woman that at least once in your life you will have to justify and defend your right to get proper treatment for a medical issue to a medical practitioner.
I have suffered from tinnitus my entire life (swimmers ear) and never received anything beyond ‘That sucks, good luck!’. I’m a man.
What you’re saying is a real thing that happens, it is in no way relevant to this conversation.
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What lind of Horton Hears a Who shit is this?
My tinnitus is a real vibration and not faulty signals from dead hair cells in my inner ear?
Seriously?
Another example of the medical mindset at work. By far the biggest self-congratulating cretins I’ve had the misfortune of dealing with have been doctors. They are truly clueless and could be replaced by a mildly-trained parrot with Alzheimer’s and I think no one would notice for years.
Dumbasses, EVERYTHING is created by your brain, that’s what “real” is you fucking deliberately obtuse frying-pan brained developmentally addled dunces.
Go fill out more forms to order more “tests” so you can ignore the results, you mental invalids.
Could you elaborate on this reaction? They claim to have actually recorded the sound. Measurably.
Are you scolding the people described in the text in this image, or do you mean she had doctors telling her she’s fine and stuff?
Edit: oh there’s a link to an article, now I see 😂
I thought otoacoustic emissions were known for a while, but I guess confirming that tinnitus is (or can be) an OAE might be promising for treatment.
They say these sounds range from 500-4500 Hz, but that seems strangely low. The ones I hear sometimes in a silent room seem much higher pitched, at the limit of what I can hear. If I had to guess, at least 15kHz.
I thought tinnitis is where your brain can’t filter it out? I think most people can hear a sound anywhere if they focus on it.
Almost. Tinnitus is constant ear ringing. Like a high pitched, constant noise. It does vary in intensity in people who have it though and is not always noticeable. (I don’t have tinnitus, so may not be 100% accurate)
When your brain can’t filter out sounds, that is one of the side effects of audio processing disorder. Probably a lot of other things that cause it too. Audio processing disorder is exactly what it sounds like. You can hear, but its hard to understand. Can’t filter sounds (you hear all sounds at their actual volume). Sometimes causes people to think I am hearing impaired. Frequently causes me to mishear things as completely different, unrelated sounds. Many people also have difficulty determining which direction noises come from, although I haven’t personally experienced this
Its literally sounds that other people can’t hear because they are generated by your own ear ears. Typically, it’s from something damaged in your ear or excess earwax.
It’s not constant, necessarily. It’s also not always ringing. And, you might not hear it in both ears.
For me, I do hear ringing often but not constantly. Sometimes, I just hear a high pitched squeal for a bit. Sometimes it’s the unlike 30 seconds and sometimes it’s much longer.
The symptom that stands out most, is the static sound. It’s like the sound you hear when you tune a tv or a radio to empty station. It mostly happens if the environment is too loud. That could be loud music/tv, a crowd of people, or maybe even just someone speaking loudly.
Most of the time, it’s just kinda annoying and not too bad. If I hear static, I know I’m in an environment that is too loud, and I need to do something to protect the hearing I still have.
That’s actually really interesting. Thanks for sharing :)
Buddhist monks call this the sound of silence
As do, funnily enough, Simon and Garfunkel
I meditate to high pitched ringing sound, tunes out thoughts.
I think the song is about emotional connection and not listening to each other?
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