Re: New Scientist Question

[Eckard Blumschein <Eckard.Blumschein@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Many youngsters told me, they repetitiously experienced ringing ears for
some hours or days after being exposed to loud music. So far, I imagined
parts of their inner ears recovering, perhaps hair cells. Was this wrong?

In discussions on the web, people with allegedly permanent tinnitus and
even people with hum unanimously claimed external influence of actions
similar to yawing. While tinnitus gets stronger during the stimulation,
the hum tends to temporarily disappear, in particular immediately after
their head was shaken.

Doesn't even my flat hand has a similar effect like yawing when I am
slowly covering my outer ear? I perceive a noise like from a seashell.
Apparent pitch is getting continuously lower while the noise first gets
gradually more salient until it eventually disappears at pretty low pitch.

I appreciate Martin mentioning OAEs because he seems to be the first one
who took the efferent system into account. Couldn't it be that the
comparatively slow neural feedback plays a role in at least some of
the additional phenomena I recalled above?

Eckard
Maybe, M165 is important.