Musical ear syndrome

I'll name that tune in one.

Had it ever since I can remember.

It's handy, to be honest, as it overlays my tinnitus, which is really severe. The result is that I hardly notice the tinnitus.

In a way, it's nice to have it, since the only musical instruments I can still hear are drums and some bass lines. To make up for that loss, I now have a non-stop soundtrack of unworldly, "choral" versions of songs and records playing in my head every waking moment. I can change the track by humming a new song, and the brain takes over and "plays" a version of that instead. If I don't make any effort to change the track, then whatever's "playing" will loop for hours, and sometimes even resume when I wake up after sleeping. But in the absence of any conscious effort on my part, or any outside stimulus, it will always eventually revert to a default setting, which in my case, is the instrumental break in Silver by Echo & the Bunnymen.

I think it's just the brain's way of compensating for the fact that my ears now only send it a tiny fraction of the frequencies it's capable of processing, so it generates this soundtrack to keep itself occupied.

Any idea how to turn the volume down? My default seems to be INXS and as I'm having trouble sleeeping at the moment this makes it even harder. Not to mention the last chorus gets played about 20 times.

I'd never heard of it and am staying in a hotel at the moment, I honestly thought there was a concert downstairs as mine even had announcements and the like. Also invented a few next songs too

*new

I've heard it's to do with hearing loss or such, I'm not that old so it's a bit of a worry but my ears have been blocked for a week or two so hopefully when I get them cleared I'll be right again. Will come in handy when my iphone battery dies though.

I should think it'll go away when your ears are unblocked. Maybe not immediately, but when you've got used to it and stopped worrying about it, then you might realize one day that it's no longer there. It's like tinnitus in general. The key to living with it is to avoid trying to overcome it. Avoid internet searches on the subject, support groups or attempting in any way to deal with it.

Are you on your own in this hotel? Because a lack of conversation or general background noise might be leaving a gap for the relevant part of the brain to start acting mischievously.

To be honest, of all the annoying aspects of being deaf, musical ear comes right down at the bottom of the list for me.

It's quite astonishing that common complaints like tinnitus etc, persist to plague the population, when so much money is spent on healthcare and developing new drugs to manage the symptoms of illness.

Why don't doctors and co try seeking cures for ailments instead of propping up the drug companies?

Yeah I'm alone, it's in Vegas so all I hear are the choppers flying down the streeet, although I think some of those might not even be real either. Last night wasnt so bad, managed to get a few tunes playing at a low level and I think I'll be ok soon.

Big Pharma have been trying to find a drug that will treat tinnitus e.g derivatives of epilepsy
drugs but so far no joy, a cure would probably merit a Nobel Prize. Lidocaine can stop tinnitus
in some people but only for a short time.