Migraine patients hear more than normal people do, according to research of Dr. Bolay and her colleagues at Gazi University Hospitals, Ankara, Turkey.
They "conducted otoacoustic emission and other testing in both ears of 53 patients with migraine and 41 controls. Both groups showed normal distortion product otoacoustic emission functioning of the inner ear at frequencies between 1 and 4kHz. Among other findings were that in controls, the mean amplitudes of transiently evoked otoacoustic emissions showed a significant decrease in response to contralateral sound stimulus. However, this was not the case in the migraineurs."
In plain language it means the following:
- There are little sound amplifiers in our inner ear (cochlea)
- Even if there's no sound from outside, they can still produce a little bit of sound (otoacoustic emission)
- Researchers tried to suppress that sound with a sound of an opposite wave-length (contralateral sound stimulus)
- In normal people, it worked just fine, they heard nothing; migraine patients, on the other hand were able to hear those suppressing sounds
"We unraveled a mechanism that leads to problems with discrimination of tones and lateralization of sound, particularly in a noisy environment, in patients with migraine," said Dr. Hayrunnisa Bolay, "a subclinical nervous system abnormality that is widely distributed from the cerebral cortex to the neuromuscular junction, and would probably be a characteristic underlying susceptibility to migraine attacks."
In other words, the conclusion the doctors arrived is thus - migraine patients can distinguish between sounds even in noisy environments better than normals.
link: Cochlear Dysfunction Apparent in Migraineurs
2 comments:
Rain I'm not sure I agree with your final conclusion - sounded more to me like the Dr. was saying that migraineurs can hear all the different sounds but not necessarily distinguish them better. I am no doubt speaking from my own prejudice here - totally anecdotal, but I have trouble sorting when there are multiple sound stimuli - I'm hearing them all but can't pick one or another out - it all just sounds like Too Much Noise. I can hear all kids of things others don't hear - high pitched noises, etc, but can't sort when there are lots of them. One reason crowds are so difficult. One neuro I spoke to called it (something like) nueral fatigue.
Anyway, very interesting study.
- megan
Megan, that's true what you said. While we perceive more sound stimulae than regular people, we don't necessarily recognize them well. Too Much Noise is a good description for it.
The thing is, there are ways to actually start distinguishing the sounds better: concentration, relaxation, etc. It will work for migraine ppl as well as for normals. With migraines, however, the sound field is larger so there's more sounds to choose from.
I do think that the "jumbled" sound that we hear is our brain's defense mechanism that tries to limit the sound stimulae thus preventing them from becoming "triggers".
Post a Comment