s t a r m | s t August 9th, 2007
Some couple of days ago, someone I spoke to shared something [rather anxiously] with me which I found very unusual and peculiar, so I went to research on it to find out if it was really something out of the ordinary or if it is a known medical condition in the medical field.
Apparently (s)he hears music / songs / voices in her head randomly or when he gets stressed up or after something happen [Like, seeing someone speak]. For example, he could be at a party where everyone’s singing the birthday song and he wouldn’t hear it at that very moment [he couldn't] but instead hear it hours later, in his head, repeating for hours or even days, which would drive him crazy, metaphorically speaking. He has bilateral acquired profound hearing loss and tinnitus.
I wasn’t being judgmental or anything but the thought of schizophrenia had crossed my mind when he shared about his experiences. However, something just didn’t fit. Plus, the psychiatrist said he “isn’t mental”. So, research.
A friend found information relating to this.
Musical hallucination / Auditory imagery. Sounds like an oxymoron if hearing impairment is taken into account [in laymen's terms: how can you hear when you have profound or off-the-chart hearing loss and cannot hear physiologically?], but it actually makes sense when one delves deeper into it.
From a webby,
.. most of the brain regions which are stimulated by music in a normal person are highly active during these hallucinations. The notable exception is the primary auditory cortex – the area responsible for early music processing – which shows very little activity. It is possible that musical hallucinations are the product of a mental malfunction where random impulses generated by the brain itself are detected by the secondary and tertiary auditory cortices, and interpreted as music. This could also explain why so many of the sufferers happen to be deaf or hearing-impaired; it is likely that the stimuli-deprived hearing centers of the brain become hypersensitive to these impulses
These music-processing regions may be continually looking for signals in the brain that they can interpret. When no sound is coming from the ears, the brain may still generate occasional, random impulses that the music-processing regions interpret as sound. They then try to match these impulses to memories of music, turning a few notes into a familiar melody.
Because they are shut off from the outside world with the acquired loss of their hearing, the world in their minds become much louder? Silence causes the minds to release melody memories? If so, why are the impulses interpreted as music and not anything auditory?
Interesting form of hallucination. They are often the only unusual experience a person will have, unlike in psychosis, where hallucinations may be part of a range of anomalous beliefs and experiences.
Unfortunately, there is no one good treatment to cure it.
Ok ok, a little heavy for a National Day holiday reading, but it is simply too fascinating to pass up on. Shucks, I should have studied to be a doctor or a psychiatrist. Or something.
