"Musical Ear" Auditory Hallucinations Finally Get A Medical Diagnosis In The New York Times

I’ve written several times about the weird phenomenon of hearing noises and music in my head ever since my sudden hearing loss, and when I cited Dr. Neil Bauman’s fascinating, in-depth book on auditory hallucinations, Phantom Voices, I made a rather strong statement about the lack of research that’s been done on the subject by the traditional medical and scientific community.

Now a long article in the Science section of today’s New York Times, Neuron Network Goes Awry And Brain Becomes An Ipod, provides a fascinating look at the first research study that’s been done on auditory hallucinations. It seems a psychiatrist in Wales, Dr. Victor Aziz with St. Cadoc’s Hospital, has collected 30 case histories over 15 years and drawn some scientific conclusions. Even though he became aware of the hallucinations in his psychiatric practice, people who have them are not crazy, Dr. Aziz says. MRI scans show musical auditory hallucinations don’t occur in the auditory cortex where the brain first processes sound, but in a different region where the brain processes and converts simple sounds into the complex patterns of music. The hallucinations are distinctly different from and far more benign than the voices schizophrenics hear telling them to do things. They are more pronounced in people who live alone or experience less auditory stimulation in general than those who live in noisy environments. Deaf and hard-of-hearing people experience them more than hearing people, and the elderly experience them more than the young. They seem to be triggered not just by hearing loss but by other neurological events such as complications from epileptic seizures or Lyme disease.

None of this is news to those of us who have bought Dr. Bauman’s book and been scouring the net to connect with others who have experienced auditory hallucinations. But it’s nice to know some serious research is starting, and I would expect the New York Times story to jump-start additional research. One final note: Michael Chorost, author of Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human, told me recently that he had experienced auditory hallucinations with his hearing loss — and in fact, like me, could even control them by “filtering” the tones to play simple songs in his head — but that they stopped when he got his cochlear implant. Another small miracle we can attribute to the amazing CI technology, and perhaps more grist for the researchers’ mill. And, as Dr. Aziz says, with more people experiencing hearing loss and with people “awash” in music in our media-saturated culture, we can expect to see more discussion of this phenomenon: “In 15 years I got 30 patients, and in less than a year I’ve had 5,” he told the New York Times. “It just tells you people are more aware of it.”