Comments | oonh: ear weirdness query

oonh

ear weirdness query

Jan 18, 2006 00:06

You're sitting along doing nothing in particular, and all of a sudden there's this kind of shift.
Maybe the way that you hear from one ear or the other just kind of changes, and there's a tone,
but it goes into the background. This isn't tinnitus. It's happened to me twice tonight. Does it have
a name?

Comments 9

kirinn January 18 2006, 05:18:03 UTC

It's happened to me several times, though usually not twice on the same day. I'd vaguely thought to calssify it as a mild form of tinnitus, but I've never looked up the definition, so I'm likely misnomering it. (I'm also likely making up verbs.)

reddragdiva January 18 2006, 13:21:19 UTC

I sometimes get that with pressure changes. Remember that your inner basically does a mechanical Fourier transform of incoming sounds and sends that to the brain, so if a bit of the coil gets a knock you'll hear it as a tone.

reddragdiva January 18 2006, 13:21:32 UTC

inner -> inner ear

mmcirvin January 18 2006, 14:42:22 UTC

Yeah, what reddragdiva said. I'm prone to congestion in the head and I also have a lot of scar tissue inside my ears from childhood infections, so my Eustachian tubes plug and unplug and abruptly shed pressure a lot, and when it happens, it sort of sounds like that.

diatom January 19 2006, 05:21:41 UTC

Huh. I've definitely experienced that. It was usually when I was sitting in a quiet place, contemplating things. Didn't notice any pressure changes... I used to wonder if it was aliens, or some higher level of hearing. But, I guess higher internal blood pressure would account for it too (?)...

Or something.

ear weirdness persimmons January 27 2006, 23:56:11 UTC

I get tinnitus (hearing tones in my ears) when I've got a sinus infection. It usually is a very pure tone, almost a sine wave, and a high frequency one at that. It especially happens when I'm trying to sleep and pressure in my sinuses has all shifted to one side of my head. Eustachian tubes can get a bit overwhelmed during a sinus infection, since they are the only barrier between the sinuses and middle ear. But I also hear brief, passing tones like this sometimes when I am not sick, perhaps due to pressure and humidity changes in the air.