A few weeks ago I posted an item about the noises I constantly hear in my head. These aren’t the usual hissing or ringing noises commonly associated with tinnitus. I’m talking about distinct sounds such as dump trucks and payloaders working at a hallucinatory construction site outside my window, a chain saw whining in the distance, several orchestral arrangements of “God Bless America” that played in my head without a break for two full days…. the list of real sounds heard distinctly goes on.
The effect is not painful or even unpleasant, but it does make you question your sanity at times — out of embarrassment I buried the “God Bless America” story in the seventh or eighth paragraph of my post. But it turns out Dr. Neil Bauman has done an entire book on the subject called Phantom Voices: Ethereal Music & Other Spooky Sounds. Dr. Bauman, who is hearing-impaired, has made a career studying, writing about and speaking on sources of hearing loss and ways of coping with it. He’s an interesting guy, as his doctoral degrees aren’t in medicine or audiology but in astronomy and theology. But like many other lone voices in the wilderness, he has spoken up on many issues important to hearing-impaired people long before the supposed “experts” have dared to venture their opinions.
Among other things, he has written extensively on otoxic drugs, herbs and medicines that can cause permanent damage to your hearing, which medical professionals still are often unaware of. He was also using and writing about assistive listening devices when the rest of us were still unaware of any assistance available beyond our clunky old hearing aids. And he started writing about the possibility of gene therapies for regeneration of the inner-ear hairs responsible for hearing when scientists first discovered in the 1980s that birds are naturally capable of regenerating their hearing hair cells.
Now he’s on to what he calls “Musical Ear Syndrome.” You’ll get an indication of how far ahead he is on this subject if you Google those words — after the two lead entries on his book, you’ll find a reference to an article in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease on “musical hallusinosis,” which I’m sure would try to convince me I’m crazy after all. But beyond those items, there seems to very little scientific research on this effect. Hallucinations or not, I know I’m not crazy and that these noises are real. The more lists and chat groups I join, the more people I find who have experienced similar noises in their heads. (Some even hear voices — though apparently not the kinds of voices schizophrenics hear that command them to do things.) So I’m glad Dr. Bauman’s on the case. I’m going to order Phantom Voices right now, and I’ll let you know what I think. In the meantime, he has written a brief but clear introduction to the subject in a recent issue of Hearing Health magazine, the authoritative publication of the Deafness Research Foundation. Check it out.