Noam Hassenfeld

it turns up the volume in your head.

Usually this kind of post-concert ringing sound goes away, but chronic tinnitus is when that ringing doesn't stop.

Stefan told me it's sort of like phantom limb pain in people who've lost a leg.

Sometimes people with tinnitus can pinpoint what caused it.

I spoke to one researcher who told me his tinnitus was caused by sitting too close to a bagpipe band at his friend's wedding.

But often tinnitus seems like it comes out of nowhere.

Like with Kelly, people just wake up one day and hear this phantom ringing.

And just like Kelly did, a lot of them go get a hearing test.

And it often tells them their hearing is fine.

So what's going on?

So let's talk about that hearing test, the kind that tinnitus patients like Kelly get all the time.

You sit in a soundproof booth, you put on headphones, the audiologist plays you a pure tone, and they say, raise your hand whenever you can hear a beep.

The audiologist keeps playing the same sound softer and softer until you stop raising your hand.

And then they do the same thing for a whole bunch of different pitches.

This is the gold standard for hearing tests.

Our ears can do so much more than just listen to beeps.

Our ears can do this because they have different types of auditory nerve fibers, these wires that carry sound signals from the inner ear to the brain.

Some of them pick up soft sounds, and other ones pick up loud sounds.

But the hearing evaluation only tests for soft sounds.

This is how someone like Kelly can have hearing problems while still having a perfectly normal hearing test.