this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2025
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Makes sense, and I've also read it's very hard to study as well. Different causes with the same perceived sound sounds like a diagnostic nightmare
It seems like it could be some kind of feedback loop where the false signalling is actually inducing a physical response that can be recorded under ideal conditions. At the end of the day, the eardrum is an audio transducer, and every other such device we know of can make "fake noise" by being pushed into an unstable state.
What is the mechanism for the ‘physical response’? Your proposition assumes that the eardrum or the cochlea have some kinda muscle that would vibrate them, which makes no sense and hasn't ever been a part of the ear anatomy.
Any organic motion detector is just a series of mechanical, chemical and electrical connections which translate the motion to nerve impulses. All these things can work backwards, although likely with much less efficiency. It's a reasonable theory that there's a path creating these sounds from tinnitus even if the original source is the brain nerve signals. Of course there's of other conflicting theories too. But it's hard to experiment to figure it out as we can't cut apart a functioning system to see what parts are doing what - well we probably could, but the ethics board might have a problem with that.
Yeah, I always thought it was just the brain filling in the blanks by lack of data as in no data meaning "constant sound" or something.
If you can actually hear the tinnitus it's very promising for curing it, if it's a spasm in a micromuscle of the ear trying to free the hair from mucus there could potentially be a way to have something slow release a muscle relaxant in the ear to remove it as an example.
That's still a physical sound even if the source is internal or at the sensor.
"Non-physical sound" would necessarily be errant nerve signaling or hallucination, something on the brain side of the sensor.
Yeah you caught it in the edit 😁