What is Tinnitus: ATA Podcasts Transcript

ATA PODCASTS: TRANSCRIPT

WHAT IS TINNITUS?

Title: What is Tinnitus?
Description:Tinnitus researchers and clinicians William Hal Martin, Ph.D. and Jack A. Vernon, Ph.D. discuss tinnitus.
Author: American Tinnitus Association; recorded by filmmaker, ATA member and advocate Jose Zambrano Cassella
Length: 01:58
Size: 1.35 MB

Transcript

(Music intro)

William Hal Martin, Ph.D.: Most of the time it sounds like a ringing, a hissing, a buzzing, a roaring, kind of a continuing sound. It can have crackles, buzzing, it can have a lot of different sounds that don't necessarily mean anything from a clinical standpoint but there's still this ongoing perception of sound, even when there is no sound around you- no sound going into the ear.

Jack A. Vernon, Ph.D.: Tinnitus is a phantom sound, not a real sound. There is no acoustic energy in tinnitus. It is a phantom sound usually heard in the ears. However if you happen to have two signals, one from each side, that are exactly balanced, that are in phase, you won't hear it in the ears- you'll hear it the head.

William Hal Martin, Ph.D.: Our best understanding is that some form of damage, either to the ear, probably to the sensory cells in the ear called hair cells, thousands of tiny sensors that change mechanical vibrations (which is sound), into electrical signals that transfer to the brain. If those are damaged, they send an error signal up the nerve, or if the nerve itself is damaged, and those signals go to the hearing part of the brain and once they get there that part of the brain doesn't know what to do with them. So it says 'oh, there's a sound, there's ringing'. I think the closest parallel that people can understand is phantom limb pain.

(Music outro)