Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: This is Robert Lamb, and you're whispering, I guests in
Speaker 1: an attempt to be to be quiet, because we're we're
Speaker 1: in a sort of quiet room. Um it's it's padded though.
Speaker 1: On the other side of the padding there are windows
Speaker 1: I can't move my own, and then the other side
Speaker 1: of the windows there is a train and traffic and
Speaker 1: occasionally helicopters and sirens, uh, birds slamming into the glass,
Speaker 1: all that sort of fun stuff. So occasionally we have
Speaker 1: to take breaks here as we record for outside sounds,
Speaker 1: but we attempt to to keep the sound of the
Speaker 1: world at bay with all of us padding right, and
Speaker 1: also by keeping our volume up. When you whisper like that,
Speaker 1: you're actually doing us a disservice because we as we'll
Speaker 1: discussing this podcast. The quieter it gets, the more you hear,
Speaker 1: so I really get your attention. Yeah, well, well, let's
Speaker 1: let's be quiet for a second. Let's see if they
Speaker 1: can hear the ambient sounds of the studio. Terrifying, isn't it?
Speaker 1: It kind of is. Actually, I don't know if you
Speaker 1: guys can pick that up. Probably not, but it does
Speaker 1: have kind of like a two thousand and one sound
Speaker 1: to it, just sort of the void but something there. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we are. We're taking on the subject of quietude,
Speaker 1: and we're taking on the subject through a vehicle called
Speaker 1: literally the Quietest Room in the World. Yes, Now, the
Speaker 1: subject of quiet, the sound of silence and all that
Speaker 1: reminds me a lot of some of what we touched
Speaker 1: on in our older episode, um splendid isolation. We're talking
Speaker 1: about isolation to a certain extent century deprivation and uh
Speaker 1: and loneliness, and talking about how for a lot of
Speaker 1: us we have this weird thing where, you know, we
Speaker 1: we want isolation, we want to move away from people.
Speaker 1: But then if but we if we get too much
Speaker 1: of that, it's not we're not We're gonna go past
Speaker 1: the beneficial stage of of isolation and we're going to
Speaker 1: get into the harmful levels of it. And likewise, with
Speaker 1: quiet we see a similar thing. I think more and
Speaker 1: more we live in noisy, busy lives. You know, the
Speaker 1: world is full of sound, The world is full of
Speaker 1: of movement and energy, and for a lot of us
Speaker 1: that comes a point where you just want to be
Speaker 1: in a place where there is no sounds. You want
Speaker 1: to find that monastery on a hill, you want to
Speaker 1: find that secret library, that secret garden, and just get
Speaker 1: away from it and shut it all off. And and
Speaker 1: it's I think it's important to to have that in
Speaker 1: some way, shape or form. But then what happens if
Speaker 1: you do enter a place that is so quiet that
Speaker 1: there is there is there's almost no sound at all,
Speaker 1: Then what can that do to It's horrifying to the brain. Really,
Speaker 1: it's inconceivable because the brain is not the we we
Speaker 1: don't have monastery brains. We have we have, you know,
Speaker 1: busy city brains. We have a chirping bird brains. We
Speaker 1: have brains that need various bits of input coming in
Speaker 1: and giving us a changing, constantly altering view of the world.
Speaker 1: But if the view of the world is just nothing,
Speaker 1: then things can get out of hand well. And and
Speaker 1: human hearing is certainly part of this something of the world. Right.
Speaker 1: There's a great article by George Mitchelson Foy called Shut
Speaker 1: Up and Listen from Psychology Today, and he talks about
Speaker 1: human hearing is being a beautiful sensitive system of organic microphones,
Speaker 1: signal processors, amplifiers like your home stereo, only better. And
Speaker 1: what happens when you switch on your home stereo, well,
Speaker 1: it gives off a very faint hum. The same is
Speaker 1: true of your hearing apparatus. Like any sound system, it
Speaker 1: generates its own little hum when working. And so this
Speaker 1: is sort of a natural state of of ourselves and
Speaker 1: our beings and the our machinery. We just don't think
Speaker 1: about it. We think about when we want to, you know,
Speaker 1: do a foreshutdown of our brain or um enter into
Speaker 1: this silence, this quietude, that it should all be absolute
Speaker 1: sign lens. But it cannot be right because inevitably, you
Speaker 1: you just hear the sound of your hearing. You'll hear
Speaker 1: the sound of your your blood circulating, of your heart beating,
Speaker 1: of your own breathing, just kind of the stillness of
Speaker 1: the air almost and you know, the quieter it gets,
Speaker 1: the more your ears listen. Yeah, I wanted to mention
Speaker 1: if you guys will indulge me for a second um
Speaker 1: our tone map in our ears, because I think this
Speaker 1: is really interesting because we usually think, okay, well, we
Speaker 1: you know, we take in sound and it vibrates our
Speaker 1: ear and it goes to the middle ear and so
Speaker 1: want to sit with the ricochet's Well, we know, we
Speaker 1: all know sort of the basics of that. So beyond
Speaker 1: you know, making our ear drums vibrate, there's a lot
Speaker 1: going on. These vibrations cause nerve hairs in the inner
Speaker 1: ear to shiver and that triggers electric signals that travel
Speaker 1: along the auditory nerve into the brain. And then one
Speaker 1: of the first stops is a patch of gray matter
Speaker 1: called the auditory cortex. Now this is where everything happens.
Speaker 1: We usually think that, uh, noise happens, or the perception
Speaker 1: of it happens in the inner ear, but it's the
Speaker 1: auditory cortex in our brain. And each nerve is tuned
Speaker 1: to a particular frequency of sound and excites only certain
Speaker 1: neurons in the auditory cortex. And then as a result,
Speaker 1: the neurons in the auditory cortex form what is known
Speaker 1: as a tone map, and the neurons at one end
Speaker 1: of the auditory cortex are tuned to low frequencies, and
Speaker 1: the farther you go towards the other end, the higher
Speaker 1: the tuning of the neurons. So the auditory cortex you
Speaker 1: can almost think of it as a musical instrument. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it is the musical instrument is played upon by
Speaker 1: these electrical impulses. Yeah, exactly, and it's it's a it's
Speaker 1: like an elaborate feedback system too, because the neurons do
Speaker 1: more than just relay signals forward into the brain. They
Speaker 1: also signal back down the line, and they reached to
Speaker 1: neighboring neurons that are tuned to nearby frequency, exciting some
Speaker 1: and then muzzling others. It sort of reminded me of
Speaker 1: when we were talking about memory last week, about how
Speaker 1: you know, with memory, you have certain neurons, excited clusters
Speaker 1: that are rising up and tamping down other competing neurons
Speaker 1: to bring a memory forward. It's a little bit similar
Speaker 1: to the way that we're perceiving sound and processing it. Right,
Speaker 1: You've got these excited neurons that are making their way
Speaker 1: and sort of crossing with other frequencies. And so these
Speaker 1: are kind of like feedback controls, and they allow us
Speaker 1: to sift through those incoming sounds and figure out the
Speaker 1: most important information and how to make sense of them
Speaker 1: without being drowned out by all the other meaning less
Speaker 1: noise around us. All right, well, we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick breaking when we come back, we will enter the
Speaker 1: quietest room in the world. All right, we're back, and U.
Speaker 1: We've talked about sound. We've talked about how it enters
Speaker 1: the brain, how we perceive it, how it contributes our
Speaker 1: understanding of the world, and uh, we've touched on how
Speaker 1: when we begin to to crank down the sound in
Speaker 1: our life, we begin to hear more of the noises
Speaker 1: that are off hidden um even when the speaker, to
Speaker 1: your point, even when the speaker is not playing, there
Speaker 1: is a humming and we don't notice the humming when
Speaker 1: the speaker is blaring some music at us. But when
Speaker 1: the speaker is on but silent, it's not really silent.
Speaker 1: You've got that feedback system exactly. So if we were
Speaker 1: to travel to or Field Laboratories in Minneapolis, we would
Speaker 1: find a room that blocks all sound. That's right, and
Speaker 1: let's enter this chamber. In order to enter this chamber,
Speaker 1: which is also called an ana coic chamber, we must
Speaker 1: pass through two vaults to get into it. And it
Speaker 1: is a room that is so soundproof it is officially
Speaker 1: listed as the quietest place on earth. This is according
Speaker 1: to the Guinness World Records. They wouldn't lie because they
Speaker 1: keep me updated on how many eggs people can eat
Speaker 1: and who's the fattest. So that's what they do. Many
Speaker 1: take names and they tabulate all this stuff. The room
Speaker 1: is used sometimes for technical analysis, for example company companies
Speaker 1: testing out the sound of a switch or a dial
Speaker 1: or some other mechanical component. In fact, past clients have
Speaker 1: included Whirlpool and Hardley Davidson, which used the chamber in
Speaker 1: an effort to produce quieter motorcycles. They want quieter motorcycles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've never know in Atlanta because it's just it's like
Speaker 1: packs and packs of crazy lad motorcycles. But it is
Speaker 1: also used. This room is also used as a cycle
Speaker 1: psychological chamber of will. Yes, so how's it constructed? What
Speaker 1: is made? What is it made of? How do you
Speaker 1: make a room that is so devoid of sound? Because
Speaker 1: clearly we're not in one right now, um, and we
Speaker 1: take quite a lot of work to really get that
Speaker 1: kind of soundless. Uh. Construction for starters, the chamber features
Speaker 1: three point three ft thick fiberglass acoustic wedges, double walls
Speaker 1: of insulated steel and foot thick concrete. And again this
Speaker 1: enables it to be ninety sound absorbent with a decibel
Speaker 1: rating of negative nine point four d b a. So
Speaker 1: any sounds below the threshold of zero d b a
Speaker 1: is undetectable by the human ear. It's true. Like so
Speaker 1: it's virtually like zero sound being, you know, bounced off
Speaker 1: the walls here. And that's what's so interesting here too,
Speaker 1: is that it is under the radar of human sound.
Speaker 1: As you say, minus night point nine point four deciples
Speaker 1: we hear at zero and above. So what happens here,
Speaker 1: that's where the psychological will UH chamber will comes into play.
Speaker 1: What happens here is that people go a little bit
Speaker 1: nuts because it's quiet, yeah, like crazy quiet. There's a
Speaker 1: mesh floor in the ceiling, and as you mentioned, you
Speaker 1: have that meter along fiberglass acoustic wedge in there. So
Speaker 1: what happens when you put a human being in there, well,
Speaker 1: they become disoriented or they even experienced hallucinations because after
Speaker 1: a few minutes, UH founder Stephen Orfield told the Daily
Speaker 1: Mailie says, your body begins to adapt to the soundlessness,
Speaker 1: picking up smaller and smaller sounds. You'll hear your heart beating. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: you can hear your lungs, your stomach gurgling loudly, and
Speaker 1: then in the antichoic chamber, you become the sound. So
Speaker 1: all of this becomes really disorienting in space and time.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's a chair in there for the sole
Speaker 1: purpose of allowing people to try to figure out their
Speaker 1: place in space and time because they don't have the
Speaker 1: I would hope, wouldn't that be the worst. But the
Speaker 1: idea is that we we don't think about it, but
Speaker 1: the vibrations around us and kind of give us these
Speaker 1: auditory cues about where things are in space and time.
Speaker 1: And if you don't really have that, then you begin
Speaker 1: to feel as though you're sort of unmoored from your reality.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that people who are in there
Speaker 1: for more than thirty minutes have to sit down, and
Speaker 1: the longest that anybody has ever made it in there
Speaker 1: is forty five minutes. Wow. Because yeah, after a while,
Speaker 1: you begin to you begin to hear more and more
Speaker 1: of these real sounds as you mentioned, but then you
Speaker 1: inevitably can end up hearing these unreal sounds as well.
Speaker 1: Audible hallucinations can exactly. Yeah, you've got that tone map
Speaker 1: kind of going nuts with what it does and doesn't
Speaker 1: have available to it, and it starts filling in the blanks.
Speaker 1: Y you had mentioned in the last podcast, there's a
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine study that shows that in another chamber,
Speaker 1: that's just fifteen minutes before people have started to hallucinate
Speaker 1: one way or another. Because again, our brains have not
Speaker 1: involved to live in a world of such silence. We
Speaker 1: we we've evolved to live in a world full of sounds,
Speaker 1: sounds that our brain has to decipher in order to
Speaker 1: navigate our way safely through it. And so at this point,
Speaker 1: our brain is saying, I don't know, man, it's all
Speaker 1: quiet there. Let's let's listen harder, Let's listen, har Let's
Speaker 1: fill in the blanks, because there might be something out
Speaker 1: there that could kill us, something out there that could
Speaker 1: sustain us, and we need to know where everything is, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, we we are built for sound, and and
Speaker 1: to take that away is to really scramble the brain
Speaker 1: into the brain to actually lose some of its purpose. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: You will not be surprised that NASA has also used
Speaker 1: the room. Yes, and of course they've ratcheted up the
Speaker 1: sensory deprivation levels by of course putting a water filled
Speaker 1: tank in the room for astronauts to plunge into just
Speaker 1: to make it a little bit more intent and to
Speaker 1: figure out how long it takes before hallucinations start to
Speaker 1: set in. Yeah, because we've mentioned in a previous episode
Speaker 1: the you know, what is a spaceship, what is a
Speaker 1: what is a space station? But a form of sensory deprivation.
Speaker 1: It is at the very least, um just a portion
Speaker 1: of our natural environment that is completely cut off, like
Speaker 1: an on a planetary scale from where we're supposed to
Speaker 1: live and there so that you're can be isolated from
Speaker 1: outside sounds. Uh, sound is going to travel a little
Speaker 1: differently inside the capsule. It's just going to be a
Speaker 1: totally different experience. So the more we know about how
Speaker 1: this affects the human body and how we can uh
Speaker 1: roll with the with the effects and and also limit
Speaker 1: the detrimental effects, all the better. And the more that
Speaker 1: Commander Chris Hadfield can post those awesome videos right first
Speaker 1: Ultimate Joy, Yeah, it makes more. You know, it's like,
Speaker 1: of course you let the man bring a guitar up
Speaker 1: there and cut a music video because uh, you know,
Speaker 1: aside from being very educational and really you know, really
Speaker 1: overall just really great for the space program. Although the
Speaker 1: videos he was doing up there, and and also the
Speaker 1: fun stuff, but also it keeps somebody from going nuts.
Speaker 1: It would have been a totally different YouTube series if
Speaker 1: he had just been going gradually insane from hearing no
Speaker 1: sound in thember, right exactly. You know, among the many
Speaker 1: detrimental effects of of exposure to such prolonged and ponderous silence,
Speaker 1: um is a spontaneous tonitis. That's right, because it's it's
Speaker 1: believed to be a response of the auditory cortex, which
Speaker 1: we talked about to the abnormal absence of all ambient sounds,
Speaker 1: and we really started to think about this. Tonita is
Speaker 1: sometimes called tenatus. I believe that either way is correct,
Speaker 1: but we began to think about this. This really is
Speaker 1: the opposite of silence or what we think about silence,
Speaker 1: because it's often called this sort of low ringing of
Speaker 1: the ears or this humming sound, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people are affected by it. And in fact, one of
Speaker 1: our listeners, Aaron, actually emailed us about it when we
Speaker 1: were talking about different topic emotions and outer space, and
Speaker 1: let me just read a quick excerpt of that. He says, funny,
Speaker 1: you should happen to mention my tonitis request at the
Speaker 1: end of today's Emotions and Outer Space episode. Because as
Speaker 1: you guys were discussing how maddening the idea of a
Speaker 1: completely silent room would be, I was just thinking to myself,
Speaker 1: Holy crap, you have no idea, speaking of which, because
Speaker 1: he has tenitus, of course, Speaking of which, here's an
Speaker 1: MP three I made a while back which simulates, to
Speaker 1: the best of garage bands ability, what my tonitis sounds like.
Speaker 1: For the most convincing effect, play it in a quiet
Speaker 1: room at a level just above that of whisper enjoy
Speaker 1: you won't um. So we're gonna have a quick clip
Speaker 1: of that so that everybody can kind of understand what
Speaker 1: we're talking about when we talk about tonitus. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that I can see where that would that would get
Speaker 1: a little old really fast, right. Yeah. Now, it's it's
Speaker 1: worth pointing out that that about one in five people
Speaker 1: experience this, and the the the way that the noise
Speaker 1: is described by people who who experienced it, it ranges
Speaker 1: from a ringing to a buzzing, to a roaring, to
Speaker 1: a clicking to a hissing uh. And it can it
Speaker 1: can be caused by a number of different different things.
Speaker 1: It's a symptom of an underlying condition. Generally we're talking
Speaker 1: stuff like age related hearing loss, ear injury, or circutary
Speaker 1: system disorder. Although it's worth noting that NIDUS affects nearly
Speaker 1: half the soldiers exposed to blasts in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: and as as we continue to have a lot of
Speaker 1: noise pollution in our modern life, this is one of
Speaker 1: those issues that keeps coming up again and again, that
Speaker 1: that more people are exposed and more people will have
Speaker 1: some sort of hearing damage. Because we'll talk about this
Speaker 1: in a little bit, but the hearing damage is directly
Speaker 1: related to that that map, that tone map in our brains.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to just give a little bit more
Speaker 1: of a description of tonitas um. Aaron I thought would
Speaker 1: be a good person to ask about this. He said
Speaker 1: that he first noticed it as a kid. He said,
Speaker 1: I can't say when I first noticed it, but it
Speaker 1: was definitely when I was a kid. The way I
Speaker 1: always remembered it and it's still true today, is that
Speaker 1: the sound of the ringing to me sounded almost exactly
Speaker 1: like the high pitched sound you'll sometimes hear when someone
Speaker 1: would turn on a CRT television. And I had asked
Speaker 1: him to if if you are in a moment um,
Speaker 1: when you have a state of flow or you're really
Speaker 1: enjoying yourself. He's a photographer, for instance, it's a really
Speaker 1: awesome photographer by the way, UM, I said, you know,
Speaker 1: does it make it stop? And he said, yeah, if
Speaker 1: I'm doing something engaging, I tend not to even notice,
Speaker 1: not that it isn't there, just that it gets tuned
Speaker 1: out like a nagging staffs m A, right, yes you are. UM, so, yes,
Speaker 1: there there. The brain can kind of deal with it,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, it's there, and it can
Speaker 1: be very maddening. And people, UM have been trying to
Speaker 1: find solutions to this because it can really be very unsettling. UM.
Speaker 1: And there are ways to go about dealing with it.
Speaker 1: But some of that is you know, related to Ladakin
Speaker 1: for instance, or cognitive behavior therapy. But there is no
Speaker 1: magic bullet for this. Yeah. I would mention that, UM,
Speaker 1: even portable music devices like MP three players and the
Speaker 1: light can contribute to this. Exposure to a lot of
Speaker 1: noises over time in the same way that you know,
Speaker 1: explosion could do it, but also prolonged to exposure to
Speaker 1: a lot of music. Uh So I do recommend UH
Speaker 1: that if you have a listening device of this nature,
Speaker 1: try turning down the max volume on it UH to
Speaker 1: prevent unnecessary damage to you're hearing. You'll hear of various
Speaker 1: accounts of famous musicians who suffer from from this just
Speaker 1: because they've continually put themselves in an environment where they're
Speaker 1: around blaring speakers. Yeah. Actually, one of our coworkers is
Speaker 1: a drummer in a band and they just told me
Speaker 1: today that he has it. Um. So yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: there are there are a bunch of different reasons why
Speaker 1: people can experience it, even lightning. Um. There have been
Speaker 1: accounts of people who have been near lightening ground lightning
Speaker 1: strikes and and have had some hearing damage as a result.
Speaker 1: Your wax blockage can do it. Yeah, to your point
Speaker 1: that you made in a previous episode, Um, some ear
Speaker 1: wax is good, but a lot of your waxes is bad.
Speaker 1: It could be bad. But don't ear candle it out though. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: earbone changes um, and then t MJ disorders. It's a
Speaker 1: there's a there's a long list of things that can
Speaker 1: that can contribute to this. So what's going on in
Speaker 1: the brain when this happens? Um to ninus actually arises
Speaker 1: when that flexibility and our tone map goes bad. So
Speaker 1: again we talked about the ways that those sound vibrations
Speaker 1: find the frequencies, and uh, they've got the tone map
Speaker 1: in the auditory cortex. So things kind of go awry
Speaker 1: when let's say you have toxic drugs or with loud noises,
Speaker 1: you have damage to the nerve hairs and the ears.
Speaker 1: It's really a story about damage to those hairs that
Speaker 1: are picking up the frequencies, and the injured nerve hairs
Speaker 1: can no longer send signals from the ear to the
Speaker 1: tone map. So it's again it's not the inner ear
Speaker 1: making the noise, but the tunnel map. So if you
Speaker 1: don't have these incoming signals coming in as they normally would,
Speaker 1: the neurons undergo a transformation. They start to eavesdrop on
Speaker 1: their neighbors, firing in response to other frequencies, and they
Speaker 1: even start to just fire randomly without any incoming signals.
Speaker 1: And then as the brains feedback control gets rewired, the
Speaker 1: neurons end up in a self sustaining glop, producing a
Speaker 1: constant ringing. That's why it's always that the low level,
Speaker 1: although sometimes exacerbated and in the volume of it seems
Speaker 1: to increase, but that's why it's always there and always present.
Speaker 1: And I thought that was very interesting because again we're
Speaker 1: talking about here is a type of hallucination by the
Speaker 1: auditory cortex or crossing of signals are just absolute firing
Speaker 1: out of nowhere and trying to fill that void of
Speaker 1: sound from the damaged hair receptor. Okay, so there are
Speaker 1: a couple of ways that you can kind of go
Speaker 1: about it um in terms of treating it, and as
Speaker 1: I mentioned, cognitive behavioral therapy is one of them. I
Speaker 1: did want to point out that this is something has
Speaker 1: been going on along into our history. This The Assyrians
Speaker 1: used to pour rose extract into the ear through a
Speaker 1: bronze tube. That sounds delightful, right. To try to alleviate it,
Speaker 1: the Roman writer Pliny the Elder suggested that earthworms boiled
Speaker 1: in goose grease be put in the ear. That sounds
Speaker 1: significantly less pleasant. It is my favorite. Medieval Welsh physicians
Speaker 1: in the town of Midify recommended that their patients take
Speaker 1: a freshly baked loaf of bread out of the oven,
Speaker 1: cut into and then quote apply to both ears as
Speaker 1: hot as can be borne, bind and thus produced perspiration
Speaker 1: and by the help of God, you will be killed.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, I hope there are some illustrations of that,
Speaker 1: because I'm just picturing like medieval peasants out of out
Speaker 1: of a out of a brugal painting, you know, walking
Speaker 1: around with with loaves of bread, giant loaves of bread
Speaker 1: stuck to their ears. That would be phenomenal, right, and
Speaker 1: then then they get teased. They're called Bunnier's. That's just
Speaker 1: no fun, just that. Um. So now you know, fast
Speaker 1: forward to our modern times and there is an interesting
Speaker 1: um tect that some physicians are taking, and this is
Speaker 1: music therapy, and I thought this was really interesting. Christo
Speaker 1: Pantev and his team at the University of Monster successfully
Speaker 1: rewired their tonitas patients tone map by taking the patient's
Speaker 1: favorite music and removing from it audio frequencies that matched
Speaker 1: that person's tonitis. So this is called notched music and
Speaker 1: it contains no energy and that frequency arrange the one
Speaker 1: that's bothering them, um, that's surrounding the tonitis frequency. So
Speaker 1: there's actually a program um that that does this, that
Speaker 1: you can go in and do this. There's a YouTube
Speaker 1: video tutorial of this that will show you how to
Speaker 1: ascertain your tonitis frequency and then to take it out
Speaker 1: of your favorite music. It's pretty cool. So, after one
Speaker 1: year listening to um their favorite notch tunes, test subjects
Speaker 1: reported a significant decrease in the loudness of the ear ringing,
Speaker 1: and that was compared to a matched group of tonitas
Speaker 1: patients who listen to a placebo or unaltered music. So
Speaker 1: what's more, and this is really interesting, is that the
Speaker 1: brain scans found that the neurons tuned to the tonight
Speaker 1: frequency in the auditory cortex became less active, so they
Speaker 1: sow this decrease. Now, what all this is pointing to
Speaker 1: is that this idea of brain plasticity that we've talked
Speaker 1: about again and again, and there are doctors who have
Speaker 1: likened it to when you lose a limb, a phantom limb,
Speaker 1: that you still get senses from that, but your brain
Speaker 1: begins to adapt and then it begins to take up
Speaker 1: the senses of the other fingers and incorporate that. So
Speaker 1: the idea is that perhaps the brain's auditory cortex um
Speaker 1: that map could be rerouted in a way that it
Speaker 1: could take up the other frequencies in a way that
Speaker 1: it doesn't create that feedback loop. So there's there's um
Speaker 1: some measure of success there, you know. Obviously again there's
Speaker 1: there's no magic bullet here, right, but there are a
Speaker 1: number of ways to mitigate it and to treat it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's a there's a path at least to say,
Speaker 1: there could be a way to in the future at
Speaker 1: least really isolated and figure out a good solution. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now that My one problem with that lest study you
Speaker 1: mentioned was that even though there was a control group,
Speaker 1: there was not a group that had pumpernickel on their
Speaker 1: ears that we know of. That we know of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I think and then in the name of fairness,
Speaker 1: you need your you need your your normal control group,
Speaker 1: you need your pumper nickel group, you need your earthworm
Speaker 1: um goose liver patte group, you need your your group
Speaker 1: that has the rose water and the copper tube. Well,
Speaker 1: I would argue that you would also go ahead and
Speaker 1: just say sour dough r Yeah, because I mean perhaps
Speaker 1: that you know, the attributes of these different types of
Speaker 1: breads would have different, uh medicative effects. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's an aravatic method that uses non I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm sure yeah, I'm sure there's some aravatic methods for
Speaker 1: treatment on this. I have to look up. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there may even be a mood for it. I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's the little hand movement to meditate with a lot
Speaker 1: of those are digestion based though, so so maybe not. Now.
Speaker 1: I know what a lot of you are thinking about
Speaker 1: it tonightas it's it's a pain, all right, it's something
Speaker 1: that that can be treated. Uh, there's no magic bullet.
Speaker 1: But is tonightas a god? Well, if it's a god, first,
Speaker 1: let's let's lay some groundwork first. You'd have to say
Speaker 1: that nearly everybody would experience it, right, if you're gonna
Speaker 1: take this, this nutty theory and run with it, And
Speaker 1: we should point out George Mitchelson foy Um, author of
Speaker 1: Shut Up and Listen Hit an article about this in
Speaker 1: Psychology Today, he is the chief proponent of this, uh,
Speaker 1: this theory. This let's say, more of a thought experiment
Speaker 1: that anything philosophical thought experiment. But this is his brain child,
Speaker 1: and I dare say he's probably the only person who
Speaker 1: thought of this uh previously. It's interesting, it is a
Speaker 1: very interesting idea. He it's not a serious argument that
Speaker 1: he's making. But it is a very very interesting philosophical
Speaker 1: question that is potentially answered by his condition. Yes, and
Speaker 1: he lays lays the groundwork to this, this uh assortation
Speaker 1: of God and tonitas by saying, Okay, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people who could be sufferers of this. And
Speaker 1: in fact I started to think about this. I started
Speaker 1: think about miss aphonia, right, And that's that's the sensitivity
Speaker 1: is certain noises and that is particular to each person.
Speaker 1: And people have argued that msophonia exists within each of us.
Speaker 1: There's one little thing like the rubbing of balloons for me,
Speaker 1: I can't stand it. Yeah, there's everybody has a trigger.
Speaker 1: So George Mitchelson Foy brings up this study, this Swedish
Speaker 1: study from fifty three which took eighty college students who
Speaker 1: swore they didn't have tenitas, and they put each one
Speaker 1: of them in a soundproof environment, and the author's Heller
Speaker 1: and Bergmann concluded that audible tenitis was experienced by of
Speaker 1: the eight apparently normally hearing adults when placed in the
Speaker 1: situation where they had some ambient noise level. So what
Speaker 1: he was saying, then, if that's the case, then most
Speaker 1: of us experience this, and if we experience this, then
Speaker 1: we generate our own sounds, separate from the outside sounds
Speaker 1: of our hearing sense that is supposed to pick up
Speaker 1: and report. So it's outside of us, is what he's saying.
Speaker 1: It's outside of ourselves. It has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: our consciousness. So if you if you start getting you know,
Speaker 1: very platonic about this, if you dip into a little
Speaker 1: reneed carts, uh, then you can arrive at the point
Speaker 1: where you say, well, tonitus is something that comes from
Speaker 1: outside myself. It is uh, in a way, the horrible
Speaker 1: strumming of some awful God perhaps or God itself. Now
Speaker 1: we're gonna leave it at that with with this theory,
Speaker 1: but it is really interesting and highly recommend any of
Speaker 1: the more philosophically minded of our listeners do check that out.
Speaker 1: You can find it. Shut up and listen on psychology today,
Speaker 1: George Mitchelson Foy. He'll get into all of the philosophical
Speaker 1: ins and out. Now. I believe that he is a
Speaker 1: sufferer of tonitus as well, and um, and I don't
Speaker 1: think that he is trying to make light of this
Speaker 1: at all, UM, So please don't take it as that.
Speaker 1: But I think that he's just trying to put it
Speaker 1: in a context of how do you live with something
Speaker 1: that is so pervasive and so um, sometimes disorienting to
Speaker 1: your own mind. Yeah, you begin to think of it
Speaker 1: and that as something that's other world layer outside of you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and certainly it's there enough to have to start thinking
Speaker 1: of new ways to approach it, and to sort of
Speaker 1: play with the idea and even maybe enjoy it on
Speaker 1: some level, as he does here with this thought experiment.
Speaker 1: You know, I was thinking about this movie and um,
Speaker 1: you're gonna kill me because I can't think of the
Speaker 1: name of it right now, But let's do it. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe you'll remember this. Um, maybe it's called Another World.
Speaker 1: The premises, there's this the female heroine who looks up
Speaker 1: and sees another earth, Another Earth there, another Earth there you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have not seen it, but I am familiar with. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: there's a scene when she talks about Russian cosmonaut and
Speaker 1: he is ends face shuttle and for six months he's there,
Speaker 1: and at the beginning of his journey, he begins to
Speaker 1: hear this tap tap tap tap tap tap, and it's
Speaker 1: this awful tapping sound, and he realizes that for six months,
Speaker 1: he's going to have to live with this noise, and
Speaker 1: so he begins to make up this story about this noise,
Speaker 1: about how it's his love or how it's this piece
Speaker 1: of music, and he recast it as something to live with,
Speaker 1: and it's this beautiful moment in the film. In fact,
Speaker 1: if we can get some audio, we will certainly share
Speaker 1: that with you guys. But I thought, in some sense,
Speaker 1: to Nice is sort of like that, are really any
Speaker 1: sort of auditory hallucinations outside of yourself, You sort of
Speaker 1: have to make them fit into your worldview. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: we're we're pattern recognition engines. That's how we roll. We
Speaker 1: things that things that occur, even things that don't seem
Speaker 1: to line up with our senses, we have to come
Speaker 1: up with some sort of explanation for them. And in
Speaker 1: that George Mitchelson voice, theory really rings true because it's
Speaker 1: kind of how we approach a lot of the things
Speaker 1: in our lives. Something unexplained happens, we have to explain it.
Speaker 1: We have to fit it into some understanding of the
Speaker 1: natural or even unnatural world. Talking to bias, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: in a good light? Yes, all right, Well, on that note,
Speaker 1: let's let's call the robot over here and just run
Speaker 1: through a few quick listener mails. All right, This first
Speaker 1: one comes to us from Adam Adam Rights and it says, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I've been enjoying your Nose to Tail series. You pick
Speaker 1: You're picking haggis as the food of choice. Brought back
Speaker 1: a funny memory. I had three months of training in Edinburgh,
Speaker 1: Scotland with a company I previously worked for. During my
Speaker 1: first week and instructor told us to try haggas as
Speaker 1: it was quote in season. Uh. He went on to
Speaker 1: explain that hagas is a small animal that lives in
Speaker 1: the Scottish Highlands. It's hard to find, but at the
Speaker 1: time it was hunting season, so they would be available
Speaker 1: at restaurants. To catch a haggas was an intricate process.
Speaker 1: You would first have to find a hole in the
Speaker 1: mountains mountain grass where it's obviously been there burrowing, and
Speaker 1: then you stay on the same lateral path, not climbing
Speaker 1: or descending. You put up a mirror and wait for
Speaker 1: the haggests to leave its home. The site of itself
Speaker 1: in the mirror would give it a heart attack and
Speaker 1: it would die. So although this sounds ridiculous. We were
Speaker 1: all in our early twenties from every corner of the globe,
Speaker 1: and I heard stranger stories that were from my Chinese
Speaker 1: and Omani colleagues. We had haggests that night and the
Speaker 1: next day our instructor told us he was just kidding
Speaker 1: and then went on to explain what we really ate.
Speaker 1: The restaurant we went to even played along, not knowing
Speaker 1: we had been had. We asked if Haggis was in season,
Speaker 1: and with a smile, he replied, of course. The Scottish
Speaker 1: definitely have a sense of good, sense of humor and
Speaker 1: like to share their national dish, even if they have
Speaker 1: to fib a bit to get you to try it.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the great show and keep up the great work.
Speaker 1: Lots of love from Cyprus. And that's Adam, our chief,
Speaker 1: the chief Happiness Officer of course happiness Plunge dot com,
Speaker 1: who's traveling the world doing good. That's right. I was
Speaker 1: very excited to know that he's in Cypress right now.
Speaker 1: Um so yeah, Haggis was the featured dish that went
Speaker 1: down our digestive journey when we did the Nose to
Speaker 1: Tail and uh, I love that And now I have
Speaker 1: this phrase to catch a haggas my brain picturing that
Speaker 1: in my head, the hag is running along and you
Speaker 1: know the mountain habitat and burrowing. That's great. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: little Haggs creature. What would that look like? I suppose
Speaker 1: the uh the animals from which its organs come from.
Speaker 1: All right, here's one from our listener, Jen jen Wrightson
Speaker 1: and says, Dear Robert and Julie, Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: mind is one of my favorite podcasts, and I listened
Speaker 1: to it all the time. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: the work you do. The episodes are always exciting and insightful.
Speaker 1: I was reminded of something you might be interested in
Speaker 1: when I listened to your episode Undercover Actors in the
Speaker 1: Shadow Self, in which Julie mentioned how costly it is
Speaker 1: for secret agents to keep in mind UH an entire
Speaker 1: cover story about themselves. When I was in grad school,
Speaker 1: I used to get sick all the time whenever I
Speaker 1: got on a plane, which was often. It happened so
Speaker 1: often that I started joking about it. I said I
Speaker 1: hadn't the immune system of a baby squirrel, and that
Speaker 1: I was a canary in a coal mine, because if
Speaker 1: anybody on that plane had a cold, or the flu
Speaker 1: soon I would too. I kept up the joking for
Speaker 1: almost ten years until I realized that for the last
Speaker 1: few years I hadn't gotten sick at all, even though
Speaker 1: I'd been traveling at the same rate as before. My
Speaker 1: diet and exercise hadn't changed. So what was it I
Speaker 1: come out in retrospect? The break between coal minor canary
Speaker 1: UH and quite healthy person can be placed cleanly in
Speaker 1: the couple of months that I came out as gay
Speaker 1: to everyone I knew. Even though my life had had
Speaker 1: periods of been kent stressed, since then, I've never I've
Speaker 1: never gotten sick at that rate. That Seriously, again, I
Speaker 1: had spent my life laying a cover story, fiction written
Speaker 1: for other people, over my real, stealth self. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until I shucked it off that I realized how heavy
Speaker 1: that story was. Anyway, your podcast made me realize that
Speaker 1: even if I changed careers in the future, one thing
Speaker 1: I had never ever want to be is a spy.
Speaker 1: Thank you for all you do best, Jen Love. That's
Speaker 1: a great story. That is a great story, and I
Speaker 1: think that that speaks volumes to how we feel when
Speaker 1: we are We feel like we're suppressing something or suppressing
Speaker 1: you know, things that are very important about ourselves. That
Speaker 1: um she says, you're you're putting a cover story over yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a cognitive and emotional um toll to be had
Speaker 1: when you have to layer these uh these these layers
Speaker 1: of fiction over your real self. So thank you Jim
Speaker 1: for sharing that. So everyone out there, I'm sure you
Speaker 1: you have some some feedback you'd like to give on
Speaker 1: this or other episodes, particularly if you like Aaron experience
Speaker 1: Tonight's in your daily life. Let us know how you
Speaker 1: deal with it. Uh. What are the methods that you
Speaker 1: use to treat it, either methods that have been uh
Speaker 1: given to you or methods that you've sort of developed
Speaker 1: on your your own way of coping with it. We'd
Speaker 1: love to hear your feedback on this. So you can
Speaker 1: find us in a number of places. Of course, the
Speaker 1: mothership for everything we do is stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot Com. Uh. You'll find our blogs there, you'll
Speaker 1: find our audio episode, to find our video, um, you'll
Speaker 1: find your lost car keys. It's all there. You can
Speaker 1: also find us on very social media networks, I mean
Speaker 1: the Picklin of course. Facebook. We're stuff to blow your
Speaker 1: mind on that we're un tumbler. We're stuff to your
Speaker 1: mind on Twitter will blow the Mind and on YouTube
Speaker 1: our channel is mind Stuff Show. And just wanted to
Speaker 1: thank Aaron for sharing his story with us, for sharing
Speaker 1: the audio clips so that you all could get a
Speaker 1: sense of it too. And uh, if you guys want
Speaker 1: to write into us and let us know about your
Speaker 1: own experiences or any questions you may have, you can
Speaker 1: do so at blow the Mind at Discovery dot com
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it,
Speaker 1: How staff works dot com