overtone tinnitus?

[Julius Verrel <Julius.Verrel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear all,

a friend of mine, a piano teacher, recently had a temporary "tinnitus" 
experience which I'd like to know more about (and I hope it is 
interesting for at least some of you).

It was actually temporary in a double sense: First, it fortunately 
disappeared after two days. Second, it was only present together with 
other sounds (speech, music, cars), and apparently always constituted 
one or more of the overtones of this sound. It first occured while F. 
was attending to high overtones (around c4) while a pupil of his was 
playing low notes - apparently he couldn't swich off this "attention" 
afterwards.

as far as I understand it, tinnitus usually denotes a nervous 
phenomenon, essentially independent of acoustic input. we wondered 
whether this "overtone tinnitus" was rather a very low-level 
phenomenon, maybe involving outer hair cells.

Any ideas?




--
Julius Verrel
FB Psychologie
Universität Münster
48149 Münster

Tel +251 83-34178