Dr. Konstantina Stankovic

So their dynamic range of hearing is reduced.

And pretty much everybody with hearing loss experiences that.

Now to have a real fear of sound, phonophobia, that's not common, and it's usually linked with some underlying mental health condition.

It's more common in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder or personality trait and other conditions.

You are correct.

And that can be true for both unpleasant and pleasant experiences.

And you are absolutely correct that it goes into our memory bank.

And how do we know that?

There are people who are profoundly deaf.

And if they have been profoundly deaf for many years and now they are becoming a candidate for having cochlear implant surgery, and that's surgery that bypasses any cells in the inner ear that could be missing or non-functional, and it directly electrically stimulates the auditory nerve,

Before they have that cochlear implant surgery, when they've been profoundly deaf, they can have memories of music that they used to listen to.

So these are auditory hallucinations, but they are different musical hallucinations.

They're not like auditory hallucinations that people with schizophrenia have.

They're not hearing voices.

They're hearing symphonies.

and concerts in their head, whatever music they used to listen to.

And what's fascinating is after they get the cochlear implant and now they can hear speech, those musical hallucinations go away.

Possibly.

And what I say possibly is that until maybe 10 years ago, we thought that if you go to a concert like that, you have ringing in your ears.

You may even feel like your ear is clogged.