Re:Tinnitus Linked to Undetected Auditory Nerve Damage – A S...
by skimojoe on Saturday December 02, 2023 @09:12AM
(#38498726)
The produced by the brain aspect as never washed with me too. My tinnitus started right after a severe sinus infection that spread to my ears. I was so blocked up an needing some sleep that I did a nasal wash and was to forceful in blowing my nose (my ears popped). Since then tinnitus has been there everyday, whereas 35 years before never even knew it was a thing.
Re:Tinnitus Linked to Undetected Auditory Nerve Damage – A S...
by Retric on Saturday December 02, 2023 @09:32AM
(#38498837)
The theory isn’t that it’s caused by the brain alone, but rather it’s like the fandom limb pain sensation after an amputation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_limb
The difference is your auditory nerve doesn’t directly carry touch signals so you hear sounds instead of say an itch.
I can't say I buy that. I've got tinnitus. Also sometimes my brain has a loss of input as I can't see, hear of feel something and it's nothing like tinnitus.
It seems more likely to me that it's a problem with the gizmo that converts mechanical movement into electrical impulses. It consists of a string like thing, the tip link, between two hairs that pulls on an ion channel in a nerve cell wall to let ions in and trigger the nerve to give a sound signal. (pic here, fig 1 if you scroll down https://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674%2809%2901170-2)
When you get an over loud sound it probably yanks that thing too hard leaving the ion channel stuck open some how or something along those lines.
The whole thing is tiny - the tip link is about 150nm long. Another pic here (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2921850/ fig 1)