Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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If you don't know what tinnitus is, it's like that ringing you hear in your ears after getting out of a loud concert, but it's all the time.
The din of the tinnitus just constantly going. It's like man's search for meaning, basically, but in your brain.
Okay, before we jump in, I need you to do me a favor. How do you pronounce this word?
Aha, yeah, okay. So there are two ways to pronounce it. Most people say tinnitus, but all the researchers I spoke to say tinnitus.
This is my colleague Noam Hassenfeld. He hosts Unexplainable, a show all about exploring scientific mysteries.
When I reported this episode, I said tinnitus. That's the one I chose.
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Chapter 2: What is tinnitus and how does it affect people?
That is so weird. Why would a hearing test not pick up on this if it's so persistent?
Yeah, so this is what I found so fascinating about this recent research that's been going on. This is research that Stefan was doing at Mass Eye and Ear in Boston. It's something called hidden hearing loss. Basically... In your ear, there's fibers that respond to soft sounds and there's fibers that respond to loud sounds.
So that means there's fibers that respond to whispers or kind of the ASMR stuff. And then there's fibers that really get activated if you're crossing the street or near an airplane or a vacuum cleaner or something. And on a hearing test, what they do is they put you in this soundproof room. The audiologist sits next to you, says, raise your hand whenever you can hear a beep.
And the beep gets softer and softer and softer until you can't hear the beep. And what they're doing is just testing the soft fibers. They're just testing if you can hear the quietest possible noise. And if you can hear the quietest possible noise, they say, hey, your hearing's fine. But that doesn't test damage that could happen to the loud fibers.
And you can see what happens to people who have damage to loud fibers if you're in a restaurant and notice that you can't understand the person across from you. It might be loud, might be in a bar or something. But if you're in a quiet room, you'll have no problem hearing the conversation.
What's happening there is you have damage in your louder fibers, and that damage is not gonna show up on a hearing test. But that damage could lead to tinnitus. That's the type of hidden hearing loss that could end up leading to tinnitus.
So the gold standard of hearing evaluation around the world to this day is completely insensitive to the loss of those fibers.
Well, I will say I've been blaming the restaurant situation on the fact that why is there a DJ in here? It's so loud. Well, it's just too loud, right?
I mean, come on. Like, we don't need a scientist to tell us they need to turn the music down at a restaurant.
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Chapter 3: How do doctors diagnose tinnitus when hearing tests are normal?
It is very real in your mind, even though your mind generates it. I'm sure you have seen faces in clouds that were not there or faces in your wallpaper. So this is actually very common. Yes. You're seeing meaning everywhere. This is like man's search for meaning, basically. But in your brain, your brain search for meaning and you attach this to everything.
Okay, yeah, I have looked up at the clouds and seen things. So that's my brain constructing my visual reality.
Yes. My biggest flex is that I figured out why some people see the dress, the infamous black and blue slash white and gold dress that was serviced in February of 2015.
Batten down the hatches. Now time for the great debate, all right? This one has everyone asking, what color is this dress?
And now it's being called the dress that broke the internet. Riddle me this. What's black and blue or gold and white? And has us debating all over.
By the way, what did you see? Is that white and gold or black and blue?
I saw black and blue, but my friends saw white and gold. And I was like, am I like, what do you mean you see white and gold? That doesn't look anything like white and gold.
And are you more like a night owl or more like a morning person?
I have developed into a morning person.
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Chapter 4: What is hidden hearing loss and how does it relate to tinnitus?
Like, if you listen to Japanese or Italian. So some languages are very Spanish, has a very fast, like, cadence.
Once you start to learn the language, you will start to hear breaks in the words, but they're not there.
They are put in by your mind. There is no objective break between the words. This parsing signal comes from you.
Oh, wow. That's so interesting. Is there a hypothesis or a reasoning why our brains work this way? Why they do this?
Of course, absolutely. Your senses is not there for your viewing pleasure. It's there for survival. So you survive better than otherwise. Yes. And if you were sitting around until you have all of the information, until all the sensory information was unambiguous, some other animal would have already eaten your lunch or maybe eaten you.
And all of your ancestors that that happened to, they're no longer with us. They're in a better place now, I guess. But you're the offspring of survivors who, the moment they could make a call, they made a call, they acted on it. And often, to boost that time-wise, to be faster, you have to put in your own guesses. So you basically have to jump to conclusions.
And the idea is the conclusion can be wrong, but it's better than not to act. I'll give an example. Let's say you're in the forest, and there is actually a tiger somewhere in the forest. and you start getting a bad sense of it, maybe you smelled something faint, maybe you saw a little toe of a tiger somewhere, and then you bolted, you left.
Your ancestors who were like, I need more information, they want to see the full tiger before I make any moves, well, they're eaten by the tiger, because by the time you see the tiger, it's too late. And what's the cost of being wrong? Well, you got a little scared, but that's okay. You know, we can live with that, literally. Maybe a little scared, we have an anxiety disorder.
It's not great, but you are alive. Whereas if you're wrong in the other way, you're dead, and you cannot reproduce.
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