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An Interview with Lola De La Mata about tinnitus
- thereisnospork 2y agoIf there's a literal sound, then with sufficiently sensitive microphones it should be possible to triangulate the sound and cauterize the source? Or maybe just glue it so it can't vibrate?
- vlovich123 2y agoAs someone else on the thread hypothesized what seems like the likely explanation to me, is that the tinnitus is always there, but as your hearing degrades your brain adjusts the gain up to maintain equilibrium in a noisy environment but this amplifies the otherwise ambient noise of how your ear works into a noticeable signal. I don’t think cauterization is the answer.
- thereisnospork 2y agoCertainly plausible, but considering both the apparent low volume and high frequency of tinnitus it should be possible to mechanically damp the tinnitus sound below threshold w/o grossly affecting hearing. In any case it's a straightforward hypothesis to test and I can't imagine there'd be a lack of volunteers.
- BoredPositron 2y ago[flagged]
- Almondsetat 2y ago"By having De La Mata place her ear into an anechoic chamber, with an ultra-sensitive microphone perched in her ear canal, they were able to provide significant evidence to the contrary. “After the first recording of it, it was ‘There’s no way, this isn’t possible.’” They tried again with her breath held, and again with her tensing her ears, and again with other members of staff, but each time it became apparent that yes, the noises De La Mata hears are seemingly something physical." I know this is basically at the end of the article, but it's not an excuse to write such a reply
- BoredPositron 2y ago[flagged]
- criddell 2y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SaHIYxpqc0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SaHIYxpqc0 The clues are in the article. The tracks are called "Left Ear" and "Right Ear" and are on YouTube.
- BoredPositron 2y agoI've seen them but there is absolutely no information at all. They don't sound like my own Tinnitus and they actually sound like a whistle. I know it is different for everyone but without a peer review this is pure marketing. Don't you believe the unnamed scientists would have published at least a preview with the release of the album? This would be groundbreaking work...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- criddell 2y agoYou don't see a lot of peer review on articles about musicians in an arts magazine. Search for "otoacoustic emissions" and you will find a bunch of research on this going back 30 years. FWIW, the sound in the YouTube video sounds exactly like my tinnitus.
- BoredPositron 2y agoSo this is old news? I really didn't know. I guess the original title with first recording of Tinnitus was a bit misleading.
- criddell 2y agoIn the article they also talk about otoacoustic emissions being a known phenomenon: > Present in most children but believed to fade over time, they’re also found far more in musicians than in other adults, for reasons yet unknown.
- manchmalscott 2y ago“The most mind-blowing moment, not only for De La Mata but the scientists too, came when they managed to actually record the sounds that she heard in her ears…by having De La Mata place her ear into an anechoic chamber, with an ultra-sensitive microphone perched in her ear canal”
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nerdponx 2y agoThe article is long (but interesting!) and a lot of it isn't about the particular scientific discovery in the headline. Here's the part that describes the discovery: > The most mind-blowing moment, not only for De La Mata but the scientists too, came when they managed to actually record the sounds that she heard in her ears – which now appear as ‘Left Ear’ and ‘Right Ear’ which begin sides A and B on the album – and in doing so opened up questions about the nature of tinnitus itself. “The NHS definition is that it’s a phantom sound that your brain is creating, that it isn’t something ‘real’, so you should try to ignore it.” By having De La Mata place her ear into an anechoic chamber, with an ultra-sensitive microphone perched in her ear canal, they were able to provide significant evidence to the contrary. “After the first recording of it, it was ‘There’s no way, this isn’t possible.’” They tried again with her breath held, and again with her tensing her ears, and again with other members of staff, but each time it became apparent that yes, the noises De La Mata hears are seemingly something physical. More intriguingly still, the two women whose ears were recorded, De La Mata and Lana Norris – the musicologist whose voice appears on the album’s ‘PINK Noise’, and who is also a choral director – were the only two people whose ears were found to produce spontaneous otoacoustic emissions. “It’s something to do with hormone difference, but they don’t really know why,” De La Mata says. Present in most children but believed to fade over time, they’re also found far more in musicians than in other adults, for reasons yet unknown. It all raises a lot of questions. “What I have is tinnitus by the definition we have now, but maybe that’s not correct. Maybe it’s something else,” De La Mata wonders aloud. Is there an academic followup to this? I would imagine that this is a pretty major anatomical/medical discovery and that the discoverers would want to write a paper about it.
- geuis 2y agoThanks for summarizing that. I have mild tinnitus that comes and goes so I wanted to get the important info. Instead the article goes on and on like a lifestyle article.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tempestn 2y agoThat's fascinating. So I guess the sound must be produced by something in the body; blood flow would be my guess. And then the structure of the ear is maybe amplifying it?
- wyager 2y agoI thought this sounded like BS, so I looked a bit more closely into ear physiology. You obviously need some kind of energy source (either an active amplifier or a noisy pump source) to have resonances that can be recorded. What would that be for tinnitus? Blood flow noise? Well it turns out that there is thought to be active amplification in mammalian ears, via the outer hair cells. They have some sort of active motor protein setup that is thought to physically amplify incoming sounds. So you can get a self-sustaining resonance that way. A healthy ear will emit sounds from spurious or resonant activation of these motor proteins. Apparently this is thought to cause a minority of cases of tinnitus. I looked into if I could buy probe microphones to test my own ears. Looks like Etymotic sells a couple in the $1500 range (as of the mid-90s), presumably more expensive now. Couldn't find any good deals on used lab-grade probe microphones online.
- blueridge 2y agoI have severe hyperacusis and have had tinnitus for decades. My entire life is a quest for quiet and silence. If we're going out with friends, the first thing I want to know is how loud the environment is, and if it's going to be a noisy outing, I decline. I often dream of buying a place in the backcountry because the noise and electronic resonance humming through the suburbs is terribly distracting and physically painful. I am still in the process of buying and returning kitchen appliances, trying to find a refrigerator that doesn't whine all day long.
- wyager 2y agoThat sounds terrible. I'm very sensitive to inductor whine - I'm sure there are a few hotels who thought they had a schizophrenic guest based on the lengths I sometimes go through to unplug whiny power supplies in hotels - but not to the point of routinely hearing it under normal daytime conditions. Have you considered moving to one of those places near a radio observatory where people aren't allowed to use electronics?
- ykonstant 2y agoI had tremendous problem with my landlord in Urbana about that; outside my apartment there was some electrical apparatus and the whine resonated throughout, but neither he nor his wife could hear it. I had to bring a couple of young neighbors to confirm that there was a noise and until this was done he really thought I had gone insane; the good thing was that after some adjustments by the electrician the noise stopped.
- tommiegannert 2y agoSonic pest repellants? Supposed to be ultrasonic, but some work around 13 kHz, I've heard... (Oh, and I have a roll of black PVC tape in my travel bag for taping over hotel air condition LEDs. I don't understand why they have to make them light up the entire room.)
- downrightmike 2y ago24/7 I've been putting cotton balls in my ears for a while now, takes a little to get used to the lower volume of everything else, but it really helps. I'm surprised at how loud things are at this point when I don't have them.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- JPLeRouzic 2y agoI have a strong tinnitus, 20 years ago I asked a doctor if he could do something about it. He put his stethoscope on my skull and told me "It's weird I can hear something". Alas, he was unable to help me. Since today I haven't thought about the contradiction between a physical and the omnipresent mantra that "Tinnitus is not something physical, it is just a noise that the brain made up".
- ralphist 2y agoDidn't you see someone else? If it's physical, it should be way easier to diagnose than most. Edit: I mean someone who specializes in hearing.
- JPLeRouzic 2y agoNo, I didn't. It may be dumb but I had things to manage like work and children in their teens, so tinnitus management had a low priority. Still, I look avidly at discussions about tinnitus. I tried the method of tapping on the neck, but it did not work for me. I tried hearing aids, but it didn't help either.
- ed312 2y agoI'm not a doctor, and I couldn't give you medical advice if I was, but tinnitus can be caused by health conditions you really should get checked out. High blood pressure etc.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- calf 2y agoHow loud was your tinnitus compared to everyday noises? Mine can be masked by urban environment during the day, and my doctor never used a stethoscope on me yet.
- JPLeRouzic 2y ago
- adamgordonbell 2y agoI get tinnitus when it's really quiet and it feels a lot like my brain is just turning up the gain so much it picks up the noise floor. Some audio cleaning tools can do the same if applied incorrectly. It makes sense hearing loss would make this worse. Less signal more gain needs to be applied.
- arnonejoe 2y agoThe mere mention of tinnitus and suddenly I hear the high pitched sound in my head. I wonder if it’s this way for others?
- wellthisisgreat 2y agoYeah and it gets stronger as you read more about it
- swifthesitation 2y agoYeah, same. I think for me, this is due to focus. Similarly, when someone says, "Don't think of a beach ball." What do you do?
- proee 2y agoYes, I didn't hear anything until I read this post, and now it won't go away!
- fatnoah 2y agoYes, same here. I don't notice it until I do.
- zzzeek 2y agoI modded this up because of the discussion regarding that tinnitus in at least some form might be an actual physically observable phenomenon. As for the article itself I saw a wall of foofy "longread for elite intellectuals" style text and skipped it entirely. Looking forward to some more meat and potatoes stories on this possible phenomenon.
- bowsamic 2y agoThis has been known for a long time, I’m not sure why it’s being reported on as if it’s a new discovery EDIT why the downvotes? I’m honestly on the edge of deleting my account here at this point
- joshuaheard 2y agoI find I get downvoted for being negative/critical and upvoted when I add something to the conversation.
- bowsamic 2y agoI added something to the conversation by critique, and also bringing to the knowledge of others that objective tinnitus is not a novel discovery
- IvyMike 2y agoIt's easy to say "this is old news" but as a non-expert, I have no idea if you are an expert, or just some random blowhard. I did a quick search but, once again, as a non-expert, I have no idea what to search for and don't see any solid results showing one way or another. I didn't downvote you, but if you make a claim and back it up with an interesting link, that tends to do a lot better.
- bowsamic 2y agoGoogle “objective tinnitus”
- baxtr 2y agoWhen it’s super quiet I hear a constant high pitch sound and there is nothing I can do get rid of it. But I don’t care about it. I wonder if I have a tinnitus or not.
- Fauntleroy 2y agoThis is a form of tinnitus
- mathsmath 2y agoYeah! I have had this as far back as I can remember, and recently found out that (I think) it's tinnitus. Interestingly enough, it doesn't really bother me unless I'm seeking it out, so I wonder if my young brain just adapted to it. Another weird fact about me is that I can hear things (I'm 35) that lots of people can't. I can definitely hear switching power supplies in everything (well, almost everything - really high quality electronics mostly seem to be exempt). I also know when bats are around, because I can hear a "clicking" noise from whatever their echolocation-producing organ is. I don't think I can hear the echolocation itself, but there is a very distinctive clicking that they make in the process.
- ffhhj 2y agoCool. Maybe resonance with their echolocation waves.
- h12nz 2y agoI’m the same age, and also seem to have heightened hearing at this range. I went to an audiologist for a tinnitus flare up, and did an ultra high frequency hearing test, which confirmed I had abnormally good hearing at 8-16k. He told me that many audiologists in this specialty believe there is a class of people with sensitive hearing, who are more perceptive to threshold changes in hearing (hence tinnitus). But there’s been no real research on it. I’m not sure to what extent I believe it (given audiology is somewhere close to physiotherapy in terms of rigour)
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
- neonate 2y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20240606093250/https://thequietus.com/interviews/lola-de-la-mata-oceans-on-azimuth-tinnitus-interview/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240606093250/https://thequietu... https://archive.ph/uuRuX https://archive.ph/uuRuX
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- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- subroutine 2y ago> low floating tones would cover [other people’s] speech This is not my experience. I've had tinnitus my entire life, and it's more of a phantom sound (cf. phantom limb) than a something that competes with sounds in the real world. That is, if there is any real noise like speech it basically gets muted. In a completely quiet environment however the ringing sensation can be comparable to high pitch TV static. The quieter the environment, the louder it gets.
- koreth1 2y agoSame experience. When I was a little kid, I thought the high-pitched whine was just what “silence” sounded like.
- subroutine 2y agoMy wild hair theory is that it could be due to sleeping with a fan on every night. Looking back, it seems like I always had a box fan, oscillating fan, or ceiling fan running at night. So that's 8 hours of auditory exposure to the same constant frequencies, every night for many years.
- duderific 2y agoExact same for me. I played drums in rock bands for years, the first few of which I used no ear protection. It's a miracle my tinnitus isn't worse. I don't notice it in normal day to day life, but at night when it's quiet at bedtime, it manifests as a high pitched ringing in both ears. For this reason I prefer to run a fan or something that generates white noise at night, which masks it somewhat.
- Already__Taken 2y agoI used to feel that way but now I find it really hard to tell if the dog is crying in the next room or I'm imagining stuff in the tinnitus. my partner at this point is already well aware of the dog
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y agoAh, yes exactly the same for me (the description of the sound), for the it started in my twenties though
- plasma_beam 2y ago22 years ago I permanently damaged my left ear at a beach concert on Tortola, British Virgin Islands. I was young, drinking in the sun, and standing far too close to a concert speaker stack that was turned up way too loud. The damage started off as pain - felt like water was stuck in my ear for weeks. It's still noticeable 22 years later. I'll always regret that moment, but have come to accept it. Your ears are so fragile.
- Traubenfuchs 2y agoHow did you even manage standing there? Disco music causes me SEVERE 11/10 shaking-twitching-must-run-away pain and anguish. With ear plugs it‘s totally fine and I enjoy the vibrations from big speakers up close. What‘s different from me (neurodivergent?) feeling pain from loud noise and others (neurotypicals?) not?
- joseda-hg 2y ago+1 on regular Disco/Party music volume being overwhelming, also neurodivergent As an additional data point, my neurotypical sister normally usually has volume at about 40% more than what I would comfortably use
- icepat 2y agoSame story for me. Water in the ear feeling for several days, except it was a punk concert and I was just young and didn't realize. Persistent low ringing in my ears ever since. Now I wear earplugs any time I'm at a concert. I do, to an extent, blame the venues for concerts for not indicating that hearing damage is possible. At 16, it's not something you would even consider. At the bare minimum, offer earplugs when you're checking tickets. A lot of smaller, grassroots festivals do.
- drones 2y agoI don't understand why these major concerts don't have disposable earplug booths. These things probably cost <1 cent to make. You could 50x markup your supply, they'd still be cheap, and attendees would still have their hearing.
- echelon 2y agoI hate this article, yet there might be something real here. On the cover, this article looks like pesudo-scientific hogwash and a marketing puff piece for some artist's album. It drones on and on. But this morsel could be absolutely groundbreaking if true: > The most mind-blowing moment, not only for De La Mata but the scientists too, came when they managed to actually record the sounds that she heard in her ears – which now appear as ‘Left Ear’ and ‘Right Ear’ which begin sides A and B on the album – and in doing so opened up questions about the nature of tinnitus itself. “The NHS definition is that it’s a phantom sound that your brain is creating, that it isn’t something ‘real’, so you should try to ignore it.” By having De La Mata place her ear into an anechoic chamber, with an ultra-sensitive microphone perched in her ear canal, they were able to provide significant evidence to the contrary. “After the first recording of it, it was ‘There’s no way, this isn’t possible.’” They tried again with her breath held, and again with her tensing her ears, and again with other members of staff, but each time it became apparent that yes, the noises De La Mata hears are seemingly something physical. Is this actually real, or was this made up? Was it simply amplified blood flow, CSF, or some other biological and unrelated phenomena? Is anyone looking into this? This is the absolutely wrong window dressing and treatment for this kind of news and investigation. This shouldn't be puffed up marketing, but should instead be in scientific news circles and in the hands of principal investigators. I'm skeptical, but maybe there's a valid line of research here that could result in a treatment for lots of impacted people.
- tomcam 2y agoIf you're young and are lucky enough to not have tinnitus, here are the pros and cons of a lifetime of good audio hygiene. I'm old and retired and don't have it. My ears are incredibly important: would much rather be deaf than blind. I love loud music right down to my core, but when I was in my early 20s it was already clear that many of my musical heroes were going deaf. The general rule is not to listen to anything in your headphones so loud that you can't detect conversation nearby. Another principle is if people can your music on headphones from more than a yard or two away, it's too loud. So what it cost me was not cranking up my favorite music when listening. I grew accustomed a much lower volume than I enjoy. It wasn't hard, like getting used to decaf coffee or Diet Coke over sugary Coke. I go to a few concerts a year and don't ear earplugs. Overall it's been very worth it and the cost has been minimal.
- m463 2y agoI suspect you might still have to keep training your ears though. I mean instead of sitting in silence, use your ears to hear conversations, to locate things in space, to discern things. A friend had ear problems, and he delayed getting a hearing aid for years. He said he lost the ability to discern conversations because he put things off too long.
- tomcam 2y agoBizarre but I guess predictable you need something like physical therapy for your hearing
- drones 2y agoThe most mind-blowing moment, not only for De La Mata but the scientists too, came when they managed to actually record the sounds that she heard in her ears – which now appear as ‘Left Ear’ and ‘Right Ear’ which begin sides A and B on the album – and in doing so opened up questions about the nature of tinnitus itself. “The NHS definition is that it’s a phantom sound that your brain is creating, that it isn’t something ‘real’, so you should try to ignore it.” By having De La Mata place her ear into an anechoic chamber, with an ultra-sensitive microphone perched in her ear canal, they were able to provide significant evidence to the contrary. “After the first recording of it, it was ‘There’s no way, this isn’t possible.’” They tried again with her breath held, and again with her tensing her ears, and again with other members of staff, but each time it became apparent that yes, the noises De La Mata hears are seemingly something physical. Utterly fascinating. I hope more research comes of this.
- amelius 2y agoI wouldn't be surprised if they picked up the electrical signals from the auditory part of the brain.
- mulle_nat 2y agoI would assume this is completely standard. The ear doctor I went to, and that guy was noone "fancy", did this and that must have been more then 10 years ago.
- hatsix 2y agoIn my experience, they're actually playing a super high frequency gradient and it's listening for the echo/feedback. It's how they do hearing tests on newborns too.
- acarabott 2y agoSounds like these could be Otoacoustic Emissions https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK580483/#:~:text=Otoacoustic%20emissions%20(OAE)%20are%20sounds,to%20screen%20for%20hearing%20loss https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK580483/#:~:text=Otoaco....
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- zackmorris 2y agoI had tinnitus? for several years, which might have been some kind of TMJ thing or pinched nerve. I recently wore an ALF appliance to fix sleep apnea and to correct a twisted bite from maybe sleeping on headgear on one side as a child, and thankfully the ringing went away. It sounded like the whine after an explosion in movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VePV-gsNBNc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VePV-gsNBNc I feel like maybe the brain fills in the missing frequencies from damaged hair cells or pinched nerves and hallucinates the sound. Like in this Coke can red-cyan color illusion: https://www.reddit.com/r/opticalillusions/comments/1cc8cwp/coca_cola_classic/ https://www.reddit.com/r/opticalillusions/comments/1cc8cwp/c... Reddit regrettably makes it hard to link directly to images, so here's one you can zoom yourself with command/control +/- for proof: https://gagadget.com/en/446542-a-photo-of-a-coca-cola-can-that-looks-red-but-is-made-up-of-only-black-and-blue-pixels-is-being-shared-on-social-media-how-does-it-work/ https://gagadget.com/en/446542-a-photo-of-a-coca-cola-can-th... Maybe a hearing aid could be set up to amplify the frequencies near the whine and dampen the rest. Kind of like adding cyan to the can so that it no longer appears red. Or removing cyan from the surrounding image. I just tried doing a deep dive on how hair cells work, but I'm just seeing a bunch of research papers. It mainly says that they don't grow back after dying. I thought that the frequency they detected was based on their location in the cochlea, but it sounds like they have a random distribution of resonant frequencies instead. Maybe gene therapy could be used to increase or re-roll the hair cell randomness so that other cells could take over for the missing ones. Or maybe a drug could make them grow or shrink slightly at random to change their resonant frequencies, like how eating biotin makes your hair grow. Knowing nothing about this, I wish there was a way for people who geek out on stuff to be able to solve a bunch of random problems and make rent, like in a think tank. I get so bored and tired of working on the same old CRUD apps day after day as tech gets more marginalized with ever-increasing workload for the same pay.
- alexpc201 2y agoI think it was Hugo Zucarelli, the inventor of Holophonics, the recording system used for albums by Roger Waters and Pink Floyd, who discovered that the human ear generates a sound of a specific frequency which it uses through interference to discern the spatial location of a sound source. This has always been a mystery as to how, besides knowing if a sound is to our left or right, we can also tell if it comes from behind or in front of us, above or below us, which should be impossible with just two ears on the sides of our head.
- m463 2y agowow, would that be one frequency in one ear, one in the other?
- xref 2y agoThe ringing in my ears has always sounded like the high-voltage flyback inside old CRT tvs/monitors. Maybe I spent too long around them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flyback_converter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flyback_converter
- sentimentscan 2y agoTinnitus can also be caused by tumour (Vestibular schwannoma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestibular_schwannoma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestibular_schwannoma). I sometimes hear high pitched sound (like hiss) in my left ear and have hearing loss of higher frequencies. I was luckily that it was discovered at MRI with contrast. You can treat it with gamma knife ( Radiosurgery ), but sadly in my case it quite near the nerve, so I can't do it, but lucky it is too small for surgery and isn't malignant. So currently I have to simply go to MRI yearly and observe. (After party i got quite sick with bacterial infection, and that caused me to go few doctors, one I think sixth doctor audiologist recommended to me MRI, as this is quite rare)