WEBVTT - The Quietest Room in the World 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.920 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.960 --> 0:00:14.960 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:18.959 This is Robert Lamb, and you're whispering, I guests in 0:00:19.000 --> 0:00:22.320 an attempt to be to be quiet, because we're we're 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:27.280 in a sort of quiet room. Um it's it's padded though. 0:00:27.320 --> 0:00:29.200 On the other side of the padding there are windows 0:00:29.400 --> 0:00:30.960 I can't move my own, and then the other side 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:33.879 of the windows there is a train and traffic and 0:00:33.920 --> 0:00:40.519 occasionally helicopters and sirens, uh, birds slamming into the glass, 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:43.239 all that sort of fun stuff. So occasionally we have 0:00:43.280 --> 0:00:45.920 to take breaks here as we record for outside sounds, 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:49.600 but we attempt to to keep the sound of the 0:00:49.640 --> 0:00:52.680 world at bay with all of us padding right, and 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:55.120 also by keeping our volume up. When you whisper like that, 0:00:55.160 --> 0:00:57.279 you're actually doing us a disservice because we as we'll 0:00:57.280 --> 0:01:00.720 discussing this podcast. The quieter it gets, the more you hear, 0:01:01.080 --> 0:01:04.120 so I really get your attention. Yeah, well, well, let's 0:01:04.200 --> 0:01:05.800 let's be quiet for a second. Let's see if they 0:01:05.800 --> 0:01:11.520 can hear the ambient sounds of the studio. Terrifying, isn't it? 0:01:11.520 --> 0:01:13.840 It kind of is. Actually, I don't know if you 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:15.759 guys can pick that up. Probably not, but it does 0:01:15.840 --> 0:01:18.839 have kind of like a two thousand and one sound 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:23.160 to it, just sort of the void but something there. Um. Yeah, 0:01:23.280 --> 0:01:26.320 so we are. We're taking on the subject of quietude, 0:01:26.360 --> 0:01:29.679 and we're taking on the subject through a vehicle called 0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:33.600 literally the Quietest Room in the World. Yes, Now, the 0:01:33.640 --> 0:01:37.280 subject of quiet, the sound of silence and all that 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:39.360 reminds me a lot of some of what we touched 0:01:39.360 --> 0:01:43.240 on in our older episode, um splendid isolation. We're talking 0:01:43.280 --> 0:01:47.360 about isolation to a certain extent century deprivation and uh 0:01:47.400 --> 0:01:50.040 and loneliness, and talking about how for a lot of 0:01:50.160 --> 0:01:52.560 us we have this weird thing where, you know, we 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:55.919 we want isolation, we want to move away from people. 0:01:56.160 --> 0:01:57.920 But then if but we if we get too much 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:00.000 of that, it's not we're not We're gonna go past 0:02:00.160 --> 0:02:03.240 the beneficial stage of of isolation and we're going to 0:02:03.320 --> 0:02:06.640 get into the harmful levels of it. And likewise, with 0:02:06.800 --> 0:02:09.680 quiet we see a similar thing. I think more and 0:02:09.720 --> 0:02:14.400 more we live in noisy, busy lives. You know, the 0:02:15.120 --> 0:02:17.519 world is full of sound, The world is full of 0:02:17.520 --> 0:02:20.880 of movement and energy, and for a lot of us 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:23.480 that comes a point where you just want to be 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:25.440 in a place where there is no sounds. You want 0:02:25.440 --> 0:02:27.760 to find that monastery on a hill, you want to 0:02:27.760 --> 0:02:31.000 find that secret library, that secret garden, and just get 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:32.960 away from it and shut it all off. And and 0:02:33.000 --> 0:02:35.880 it's I think it's important to to have that in 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:38.680 some way, shape or form. But then what happens if 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:42.000 you do enter a place that is so quiet that 0:02:42.080 --> 0:02:44.600 there is there is there's almost no sound at all, 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:48.840 Then what can that do to It's horrifying to the brain. Really, 0:02:49.000 --> 0:02:52.040 it's inconceivable because the brain is not the we we 0:02:52.120 --> 0:02:56.040 don't have monastery brains. We have we have, you know, 0:02:56.080 --> 0:02:58.880 busy city brains. We have a chirping bird brains. We 0:02:58.919 --> 0:03:02.200 have brains that need various bits of input coming in 0:03:02.240 --> 0:03:06.280 and giving us a changing, constantly altering view of the world. 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:08.920 But if the view of the world is just nothing, 0:03:09.160 --> 0:03:11.840 then things can get out of hand well. And and 0:03:11.919 --> 0:03:16.079 human hearing is certainly part of this something of the world. Right. 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:19.639 There's a great article by George Mitchelson Foy called Shut 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:22.000 Up and Listen from Psychology Today, and he talks about 0:03:22.080 --> 0:03:26.160 human hearing is being a beautiful sensitive system of organic microphones, 0:03:26.240 --> 0:03:30.960 signal processors, amplifiers like your home stereo, only better. And 0:03:31.040 --> 0:03:33.440 what happens when you switch on your home stereo, well, 0:03:33.520 --> 0:03:36.200 it gives off a very faint hum. The same is 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:39.440 true of your hearing apparatus. Like any sound system, it 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:43.600 generates its own little hum when working. And so this 0:03:43.680 --> 0:03:47.240 is sort of a natural state of of ourselves and 0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:49.480 our beings and the our machinery. We just don't think 0:03:49.480 --> 0:03:51.640 about it. We think about when we want to, you know, 0:03:51.880 --> 0:03:55.560 do a foreshutdown of our brain or um enter into 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:59.520 this silence, this quietude, that it should all be absolute 0:03:59.680 --> 0:04:03.440 sign lens. But it cannot be right because inevitably, you 0:04:03.440 --> 0:04:06.160 you just hear the sound of your hearing. You'll hear 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:09.360 the sound of your your blood circulating, of your heart beating, 0:04:09.360 --> 0:04:11.880 of your own breathing, just kind of the stillness of 0:04:11.880 --> 0:04:15.640 the air almost and you know, the quieter it gets, 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:19.040 the more your ears listen. Yeah, I wanted to mention 0:04:19.160 --> 0:04:21.120 if you guys will indulge me for a second um 0:04:21.560 --> 0:04:23.479 our tone map in our ears, because I think this 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:25.680 is really interesting because we usually think, okay, well, we 0:04:26.600 --> 0:04:28.720 you know, we take in sound and it vibrates our 0:04:28.839 --> 0:04:30.080 ear and it goes to the middle ear and so 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:32.599 want to sit with the ricochet's Well, we know, we 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:34.920 all know sort of the basics of that. So beyond 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:37.640 you know, making our ear drums vibrate, there's a lot 0:04:37.680 --> 0:04:41.000 going on. These vibrations cause nerve hairs in the inner 0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:44.880 ear to shiver and that triggers electric signals that travel 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:48.440 along the auditory nerve into the brain. And then one 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:51.080 of the first stops is a patch of gray matter 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:54.520 called the auditory cortex. Now this is where everything happens. 0:04:54.600 --> 0:04:58.560 We usually think that, uh, noise happens, or the perception 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:00.320 of it happens in the inner ear, but it's the 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:04.560 auditory cortex in our brain. And each nerve is tuned 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:08.200 to a particular frequency of sound and excites only certain 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:11.560 neurons in the auditory cortex. And then as a result, 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:14.960 the neurons in the auditory cortex form what is known 0:05:15.080 --> 0:05:18.120 as a tone map, and the neurons at one end 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:21.359 of the auditory cortex are tuned to low frequencies, and 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:24.080 the farther you go towards the other end, the higher 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:27.240 the tuning of the neurons. So the auditory cortex you 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:30.080 can almost think of it as a musical instrument. Uh, 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:32.640 and it is the musical instrument is played upon by 0:05:32.680 --> 0:05:35.840 these electrical impulses. Yeah, exactly, and it's it's a it's 0:05:35.839 --> 0:05:38.880 like an elaborate feedback system too, because the neurons do 0:05:38.960 --> 0:05:42.280 more than just relay signals forward into the brain. They 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:45.279 also signal back down the line, and they reached to 0:05:45.720 --> 0:05:50.080 neighboring neurons that are tuned to nearby frequency, exciting some 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:53.400 and then muzzling others. It sort of reminded me of 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:56.000 when we were talking about memory last week, about how 0:05:56.440 --> 0:06:00.000 you know, with memory, you have certain neurons, excited clusters 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:05.080 that are rising up and tamping down other competing neurons 0:06:05.480 --> 0:06:08.800 to bring a memory forward. It's a little bit similar 0:06:08.800 --> 0:06:12.720 to the way that we're perceiving sound and processing it. Right, 0:06:12.800 --> 0:06:15.680 You've got these excited neurons that are making their way 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:18.800 and sort of crossing with other frequencies. And so these 0:06:18.839 --> 0:06:21.160 are kind of like feedback controls, and they allow us 0:06:21.200 --> 0:06:23.839 to sift through those incoming sounds and figure out the 0:06:23.880 --> 0:06:27.520 most important information and how to make sense of them 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:30.200 without being drowned out by all the other meaning less 0:06:30.240 --> 0:06:32.680 noise around us. All right, well, we're gonna take a 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:34.919 quick breaking when we come back, we will enter the 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:45.680 quietest room in the world. All right, we're back, and U. 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:49.880 We've talked about sound. We've talked about how it enters 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:52.440 the brain, how we perceive it, how it contributes our 0:06:52.520 --> 0:06:55.479 understanding of the world, and uh, we've touched on how 0:06:55.520 --> 0:06:57.480 when we begin to to crank down the sound in 0:06:57.480 --> 0:06:59.480 our life, we begin to hear more of the noises 0:06:59.520 --> 0:07:02.400 that are off hidden um even when the speaker, to 0:07:02.440 --> 0:07:04.600 your point, even when the speaker is not playing, there 0:07:04.680 --> 0:07:06.440 is a humming and we don't notice the humming when 0:07:06.440 --> 0:07:09.560 the speaker is blaring some music at us. But when 0:07:09.600 --> 0:07:13.400 the speaker is on but silent, it's not really silent. 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:17.600 You've got that feedback system exactly. So if we were 0:07:17.640 --> 0:07:21.239 to travel to or Field Laboratories in Minneapolis, we would 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:26.920 find a room that blocks all sound. That's right, and 0:07:27.000 --> 0:07:29.720 let's enter this chamber. In order to enter this chamber, 0:07:29.760 --> 0:07:33.480 which is also called an ana coic chamber, we must 0:07:33.520 --> 0:07:36.200 pass through two vaults to get into it. And it 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:39.360 is a room that is so soundproof it is officially 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:42.040 listed as the quietest place on earth. This is according 0:07:42.040 --> 0:07:44.960 to the Guinness World Records. They wouldn't lie because they 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:47.080 keep me updated on how many eggs people can eat 0:07:47.080 --> 0:07:50.280 and who's the fattest. So that's what they do. Many 0:07:50.360 --> 0:07:53.280 take names and they tabulate all this stuff. The room 0:07:53.560 --> 0:07:57.280 is used sometimes for technical analysis, for example company companies 0:07:57.280 --> 0:07:59.280 testing out the sound of a switch or a dial 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:02.640 or some other mechanical component. In fact, past clients have 0:08:02.720 --> 0:08:06.640 included Whirlpool and Hardley Davidson, which used the chamber in 0:08:06.680 --> 0:08:10.760 an effort to produce quieter motorcycles. They want quieter motorcycles. Yeah, 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:14.320 we've never know in Atlanta because it's just it's like 0:08:14.400 --> 0:08:18.200 packs and packs of crazy lad motorcycles. But it is 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:20.280 also used. This room is also used as a cycle 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:24.520 psychological chamber of will. Yes, so how's it constructed? What 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:25.880 is made? What is it made of? How do you 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:28.880 make a room that is so devoid of sound? Because 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:32.000 clearly we're not in one right now, um, and we 0:08:32.120 --> 0:08:33.760 take quite a lot of work to really get that 0:08:33.880 --> 0:08:38.720 kind of soundless. Uh. Construction for starters, the chamber features 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:43.120 three point three ft thick fiberglass acoustic wedges, double walls 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:46.520 of insulated steel and foot thick concrete. And again this 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:50.480 enables it to be ninety sound absorbent with a decibel 0:08:50.640 --> 0:08:53.959 rating of negative nine point four d b a. So 0:08:54.000 --> 0:08:56.720 any sounds below the threshold of zero d b a 0:08:56.840 --> 0:08:59.720 is undetectable by the human ear. It's true. Like so 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:03.600 it's virtually like zero sound being, you know, bounced off 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:06.280 the walls here. And that's what's so interesting here too, 0:09:06.440 --> 0:09:09.320 is that it is under the radar of human sound. 0:09:09.559 --> 0:09:12.880 As you say, minus night point nine point four deciples 0:09:13.280 --> 0:09:18.080 we hear at zero and above. So what happens here, 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:21.920 that's where the psychological will UH chamber will comes into play. 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:24.160 What happens here is that people go a little bit 0:09:24.240 --> 0:09:29.360 nuts because it's quiet, yeah, like crazy quiet. There's a 0:09:29.360 --> 0:09:31.280 mesh floor in the ceiling, and as you mentioned, you 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:34.920 have that meter along fiberglass acoustic wedge in there. So 0:09:35.120 --> 0:09:37.559 what happens when you put a human being in there, well, 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:42.920 they become disoriented or they even experienced hallucinations because after 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:47.480 a few minutes, UH founder Stephen Orfield told the Daily 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:50.599 Mailie says, your body begins to adapt to the soundlessness, 0:09:50.679 --> 0:09:55.720 picking up smaller and smaller sounds. You'll hear your heart beating. Sometimes, 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:59.880 you can hear your lungs, your stomach gurgling loudly, and 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:03.959 then in the antichoic chamber, you become the sound. So 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:06.880 all of this becomes really disorienting in space and time. 0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:09.839 In fact, there's a chair in there for the sole 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:13.160 purpose of allowing people to try to figure out their 0:10:13.240 --> 0:10:16.199 place in space and time because they don't have the 0:10:18.000 --> 0:10:20.400 I would hope, wouldn't that be the worst. But the 0:10:20.480 --> 0:10:22.840 idea is that we we don't think about it, but 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:25.760 the vibrations around us and kind of give us these 0:10:25.760 --> 0:10:28.280 auditory cues about where things are in space and time. 0:10:28.320 --> 0:10:30.240 And if you don't really have that, then you begin 0:10:30.280 --> 0:10:33.400 to feel as though you're sort of unmoored from your reality. 0:10:33.559 --> 0:10:35.280 And it turns out that people who are in there 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:37.440 for more than thirty minutes have to sit down, and 0:10:37.480 --> 0:10:39.520 the longest that anybody has ever made it in there 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:42.520 is forty five minutes. Wow. Because yeah, after a while, 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:44.040 you begin to you begin to hear more and more 0:10:44.080 --> 0:10:46.839 of these real sounds as you mentioned, but then you 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:50.319 inevitably can end up hearing these unreal sounds as well. 0:10:50.520 --> 0:10:54.400 Audible hallucinations can exactly. Yeah, you've got that tone map 0:10:54.480 --> 0:10:56.640 kind of going nuts with what it does and doesn't 0:10:56.640 --> 0:10:59.880 have available to it, and it starts filling in the blanks. 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:02.520 Y you had mentioned in the last podcast, there's a 0:11:02.520 --> 0:11:05.840 two thousand and nine study that shows that in another chamber, 0:11:06.280 --> 0:11:08.800 that's just fifteen minutes before people have started to hallucinate 0:11:08.840 --> 0:11:11.200 one way or another. Because again, our brains have not 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:14.480 involved to live in a world of such silence. We 0:11:14.480 --> 0:11:17.560 we we've evolved to live in a world full of sounds, 0:11:17.559 --> 0:11:20.240 sounds that our brain has to decipher in order to 0:11:20.360 --> 0:11:23.560 navigate our way safely through it. And so at this point, 0:11:23.559 --> 0:11:25.840 our brain is saying, I don't know, man, it's all 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:28.560 quiet there. Let's let's listen harder, Let's listen, har Let's 0:11:28.559 --> 0:11:30.840 fill in the blanks, because there might be something out 0:11:30.880 --> 0:11:33.160 there that could kill us, something out there that could 0:11:33.600 --> 0:11:36.199 sustain us, and we need to know where everything is, right, 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:39.040 I mean, we we are built for sound, and and 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:41.480 to take that away is to really scramble the brain 0:11:41.600 --> 0:11:45.480 into the brain to actually lose some of its purpose. Right, Um, 0:11:45.520 --> 0:11:48.320 You will not be surprised that NASA has also used 0:11:48.360 --> 0:11:50.920 the room. Yes, and of course they've ratcheted up the 0:11:50.960 --> 0:11:54.880 sensory deprivation levels by of course putting a water filled 0:11:55.000 --> 0:11:58.400 tank in the room for astronauts to plunge into just 0:11:58.440 --> 0:12:00.920 to make it a little bit more intent and to 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:04.079 figure out how long it takes before hallucinations start to 0:12:04.120 --> 0:12:06.760 set in. Yeah, because we've mentioned in a previous episode 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:09.040 the you know, what is a spaceship, what is a 0:12:09.280 --> 0:12:12.239 what is a space station? But a form of sensory deprivation. 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:15.720 It is at the very least, um just a portion 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:19.160 of our natural environment that is completely cut off, like 0:12:19.200 --> 0:12:21.920 an on a planetary scale from where we're supposed to 0:12:22.000 --> 0:12:25.000 live and there so that you're can be isolated from 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:27.640 outside sounds. Uh, sound is going to travel a little 0:12:27.640 --> 0:12:29.719 differently inside the capsule. It's just going to be a 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:32.120 totally different experience. So the more we know about how 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:35.119 this affects the human body and how we can uh 0:12:35.600 --> 0:12:38.840 roll with the with the effects and and also limit 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:42.760 the detrimental effects, all the better. And the more that 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:46.640 Commander Chris Hadfield can post those awesome videos right first 0:12:46.679 --> 0:12:48.680 Ultimate Joy, Yeah, it makes more. You know, it's like, 0:12:48.679 --> 0:12:50.400 of course you let the man bring a guitar up 0:12:50.440 --> 0:12:53.760 there and cut a music video because uh, you know, 0:12:53.800 --> 0:12:56.600 aside from being very educational and really you know, really 0:12:56.640 --> 0:12:59.160 overall just really great for the space program. Although the 0:12:59.240 --> 0:13:01.160 videos he was doing up there, and and also the 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:04.920 fun stuff, but also it keeps somebody from going nuts. 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:07.760 It would have been a totally different YouTube series if 0:13:07.760 --> 0:13:10.640 he had just been going gradually insane from hearing no 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:14.840 sound in thember, right exactly. You know, among the many 0:13:14.920 --> 0:13:20.280 detrimental effects of of exposure to such prolonged and ponderous silence, 0:13:20.720 --> 0:13:25.000 um is a spontaneous tonitis. That's right, because it's it's 0:13:25.000 --> 0:13:27.440 believed to be a response of the auditory cortex, which 0:13:27.480 --> 0:13:31.400 we talked about to the abnormal absence of all ambient sounds, 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:35.559 and we really started to think about this. Tonita is 0:13:35.640 --> 0:13:39.760 sometimes called tenatus. I believe that either way is correct, 0:13:40.160 --> 0:13:41.960 but we began to think about this. This really is 0:13:42.000 --> 0:13:44.640 the opposite of silence or what we think about silence, 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:47.680 because it's often called this sort of low ringing of 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:50.480 the ears or this humming sound, and a lot of 0:13:50.480 --> 0:13:52.959 people are affected by it. And in fact, one of 0:13:53.000 --> 0:13:58.280 our listeners, Aaron, actually emailed us about it when we 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:02.280 were talking about different topic emotions and outer space, and 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:05.360 let me just read a quick excerpt of that. He says, funny, 0:14:05.400 --> 0:14:07.800 you should happen to mention my tonitis request at the 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:10.400 end of today's Emotions and Outer Space episode. Because as 0:14:10.400 --> 0:14:13.560 you guys were discussing how maddening the idea of a 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:16.680 completely silent room would be, I was just thinking to myself, 0:14:16.720 --> 0:14:20.360 Holy crap, you have no idea, speaking of which, because 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:23.760 he has tenitus, of course, Speaking of which, here's an 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:26.440 MP three I made a while back which simulates, to 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:29.600 the best of garage bands ability, what my tonitis sounds like. 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:32.080 For the most convincing effect, play it in a quiet 0:14:32.160 --> 0:14:35.600 room at a level just above that of whisper enjoy 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:38.360 you won't um. So we're gonna have a quick clip 0:14:38.440 --> 0:14:41.120 of that so that everybody can kind of understand what 0:14:41.120 --> 0:14:47.960 we're talking about when we talk about tonitus. Yeah, so 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:49.880 that I can see where that would that would get 0:14:49.920 --> 0:14:52.760 a little old really fast, right. Yeah. Now, it's it's 0:14:52.760 --> 0:14:55.440 worth pointing out that that about one in five people 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:59.120 experience this, and the the the way that the noise 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:02.920 is described by people who who experienced it, it ranges 0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:05.120 from a ringing to a buzzing, to a roaring, to 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:08.200 a clicking to a hissing uh. And it can it 0:15:08.200 --> 0:15:10.120 can be caused by a number of different different things. 0:15:10.160 --> 0:15:13.240 It's a symptom of an underlying condition. Generally we're talking 0:15:13.240 --> 0:15:16.920 stuff like age related hearing loss, ear injury, or circutary 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:20.200 system disorder. Although it's worth noting that NIDUS affects nearly 0:15:20.240 --> 0:15:23.600 half the soldiers exposed to blasts in Iraq and Afghanistan, 0:15:23.760 --> 0:15:25.640 and as as we continue to have a lot of 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:28.480 noise pollution in our modern life, this is one of 0:15:28.520 --> 0:15:31.480 those issues that keeps coming up again and again, that 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:34.440 that more people are exposed and more people will have 0:15:34.480 --> 0:15:36.680 some sort of hearing damage. Because we'll talk about this 0:15:36.720 --> 0:15:39.000 in a little bit, but the hearing damage is directly 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:43.760 related to that that map, that tone map in our brains. 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:46.760 But I wanted to just give a little bit more 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:50.440 of a description of tonitas um. Aaron I thought would 0:15:50.440 --> 0:15:52.120 be a good person to ask about this. He said 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:54.520 that he first noticed it as a kid. He said, 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:57.320 I can't say when I first noticed it, but it 0:15:57.400 --> 0:15:59.680 was definitely when I was a kid. The way I 0:15:59.680 --> 0:16:01.960 always remembered it and it's still true today, is that 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:04.560 the sound of the ringing to me sounded almost exactly 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:06.840 like the high pitched sound you'll sometimes hear when someone 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:10.400 would turn on a CRT television. And I had asked 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:12.560 him to if if you are in a moment um, 0:16:12.720 --> 0:16:14.520 when you have a state of flow or you're really 0:16:14.600 --> 0:16:17.360 enjoying yourself. He's a photographer, for instance, it's a really 0:16:17.360 --> 0:16:19.920 awesome photographer by the way, UM, I said, you know, 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:22.880 does it make it stop? And he said, yeah, if 0:16:22.920 --> 0:16:25.200 I'm doing something engaging, I tend not to even notice, 0:16:25.560 --> 0:16:27.880 not that it isn't there, just that it gets tuned 0:16:27.880 --> 0:16:35.360 out like a nagging staffs m A, right, yes you are. UM, so, yes, 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:37.480 there there. The brain can kind of deal with it, 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:39.640 but for the most part, it's there, and it can 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:42.800 be very maddening. And people, UM have been trying to 0:16:42.840 --> 0:16:47.640 find solutions to this because it can really be very unsettling. UM. 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:50.080 And there are ways to go about dealing with it. 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:52.960 But some of that is you know, related to Ladakin 0:16:53.040 --> 0:16:57.400 for instance, or cognitive behavior therapy. But there is no 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:00.400 magic bullet for this. Yeah. I would mention that, UM, 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:03.520 even portable music devices like MP three players and the 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:06.040 light can contribute to this. Exposure to a lot of 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:07.879 noises over time in the same way that you know, 0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:11.040 explosion could do it, but also prolonged to exposure to 0:17:11.040 --> 0:17:14.880 a lot of music. Uh So I do recommend UH 0:17:14.920 --> 0:17:17.520 that if you have a listening device of this nature, 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:20.240 try turning down the max volume on it UH to 0:17:20.440 --> 0:17:24.440 prevent unnecessary damage to you're hearing. You'll hear of various 0:17:24.520 --> 0:17:28.159 accounts of famous musicians who suffer from from this just 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:31.400 because they've continually put themselves in an environment where they're 0:17:31.440 --> 0:17:34.200 around blaring speakers. Yeah. Actually, one of our coworkers is 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:35.800 a drummer in a band and they just told me 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:38.439 today that he has it. Um. So yeah, I mean 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:40.600 there are there are a bunch of different reasons why 0:17:40.640 --> 0:17:43.600 people can experience it, even lightning. Um. There have been 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:46.760 accounts of people who have been near lightening ground lightning 0:17:46.760 --> 0:17:50.680 strikes and and have had some hearing damage as a result. 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:54.040 Your wax blockage can do it. Yeah, to your point 0:17:54.280 --> 0:17:56.600 that you made in a previous episode, Um, some ear 0:17:56.600 --> 0:17:59.920 wax is good, but a lot of your waxes is bad. 0:18:00.040 --> 0:18:03.159 It could be bad. But don't ear candle it out though. Yeah, right, 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:09.320 earbone changes um, and then t MJ disorders. It's a 0:18:09.359 --> 0:18:11.040 there's a there's a long list of things that can 0:18:11.080 --> 0:18:13.960 that can contribute to this. So what's going on in 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:17.680 the brain when this happens? Um to ninus actually arises 0:18:17.720 --> 0:18:20.840 when that flexibility and our tone map goes bad. So 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:23.960 again we talked about the ways that those sound vibrations 0:18:24.520 --> 0:18:28.240 find the frequencies, and uh, they've got the tone map 0:18:28.280 --> 0:18:31.600 in the auditory cortex. So things kind of go awry 0:18:31.720 --> 0:18:34.760 when let's say you have toxic drugs or with loud noises, 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:37.639 you have damage to the nerve hairs and the ears. 0:18:37.640 --> 0:18:41.399 It's really a story about damage to those hairs that 0:18:41.440 --> 0:18:44.720 are picking up the frequencies, and the injured nerve hairs 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:46.840 can no longer send signals from the ear to the 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:49.520 tone map. So it's again it's not the inner ear 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:52.280 making the noise, but the tunnel map. So if you 0:18:52.320 --> 0:18:55.879 don't have these incoming signals coming in as they normally would, 0:18:55.920 --> 0:18:59.639 the neurons undergo a transformation. They start to eavesdrop on 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:04.679 their neighbors, firing in response to other frequencies, and they 0:19:04.680 --> 0:19:08.320 even start to just fire randomly without any incoming signals. 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:12.240 And then as the brains feedback control gets rewired, the 0:19:12.280 --> 0:19:15.280 neurons end up in a self sustaining glop, producing a 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:18.080 constant ringing. That's why it's always that the low level, 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:22.000 although sometimes exacerbated and in the volume of it seems 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:24.960 to increase, but that's why it's always there and always present. 0:19:25.480 --> 0:19:27.520 And I thought that was very interesting because again we're 0:19:27.560 --> 0:19:31.679 talking about here is a type of hallucination by the 0:19:31.720 --> 0:19:36.280 auditory cortex or crossing of signals are just absolute firing 0:19:36.280 --> 0:19:39.919 out of nowhere and trying to fill that void of 0:19:40.000 --> 0:19:44.760 sound from the damaged hair receptor. Okay, so there are 0:19:44.800 --> 0:19:46.399 a couple of ways that you can kind of go 0:19:46.480 --> 0:19:48.360 about it um in terms of treating it, and as 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:52.199 I mentioned, cognitive behavioral therapy is one of them. I 0:19:52.240 --> 0:19:54.040 did want to point out that this is something has 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:57.520 been going on along into our history. This The Assyrians 0:19:57.600 --> 0:20:00.520 used to pour rose extract into the ear through a 0:20:00.560 --> 0:20:03.639 bronze tube. That sounds delightful, right. To try to alleviate it, 0:20:04.040 --> 0:20:07.800 the Roman writer Pliny the Elder suggested that earthworms boiled 0:20:07.840 --> 0:20:10.520 in goose grease be put in the ear. That sounds 0:20:10.520 --> 0:20:14.399 significantly less pleasant. It is my favorite. Medieval Welsh physicians 0:20:14.400 --> 0:20:18.200 in the town of Midify recommended that their patients take 0:20:18.240 --> 0:20:20.840 a freshly baked loaf of bread out of the oven, 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:24.160 cut into and then quote apply to both ears as 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:28.600 hot as can be borne, bind and thus produced perspiration 0:20:28.920 --> 0:20:30.640 and by the help of God, you will be killed. 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:33.640 Oh my goodness, I hope there are some illustrations of that, 0:20:33.880 --> 0:20:38.760 because I'm just picturing like medieval peasants out of out 0:20:38.760 --> 0:20:40.760 of a out of a brugal painting, you know, walking 0:20:40.760 --> 0:20:43.600 around with with loaves of bread, giant loaves of bread 0:20:43.600 --> 0:20:46.480 stuck to their ears. That would be phenomenal, right, and 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:49.560 then then they get teased. They're called Bunnier's. That's just 0:20:49.640 --> 0:20:56.480 no fun, just that. Um. So now you know, fast 0:20:56.520 --> 0:21:00.399 forward to our modern times and there is an interesting 0:21:00.800 --> 0:21:04.879 um tect that some physicians are taking, and this is 0:21:05.000 --> 0:21:08.159 music therapy, and I thought this was really interesting. Christo 0:21:08.240 --> 0:21:12.120 Pantev and his team at the University of Monster successfully 0:21:12.280 --> 0:21:16.520 rewired their tonitas patients tone map by taking the patient's 0:21:16.560 --> 0:21:20.960 favorite music and removing from it audio frequencies that matched 0:21:21.160 --> 0:21:26.480 that person's tonitis. So this is called notched music and 0:21:26.560 --> 0:21:29.800 it contains no energy and that frequency arrange the one 0:21:29.800 --> 0:21:34.920