The effect can occur in just seconds if the right tone is played, and it can render the person dizzy for tens of seconds even after the tone has stopped.īy monitoring the neurons and inner ear fluid motion in toadfish, which have similar inner ear balance organs as humans, it was discovered that this dizzying effect occurs when the sound generates pathological fluid mechanical waves in the semicircular canals of the ear. How does sound excite the inner ear balance organs causing them to send the wrong head-motion signals to the brain?"
"What our paper is about is the biophysics of how that happens.
They get dizzy, and they feel nauseous, and they can't see well and lose their balance," says Rabbitt. "It's very much like the feeling when they've had too much to drink. But if the signal from the ear is wrong, the eyes movements are also wrong, causing the patient to feel dizzy. This condition causes the eyes to rotate through an automatic reflex that normally would stabilize the image in the eye during head movements. But in 1929, Italian biologist Pietro Tullio discovered that a hole in that bony enclosure can cause the inner ear semicircular canals to become sensitive to acoustic sounds like a sustained tone from a musical instrument such as a trumpet, violin or piano, even a higher-pitched conversation. Normally, the inner-ear balance and hearing organs are encased in solid bone. The lead author is Utah biomedical engineering doctoral student Marta Iversen, and the senior author is Utah biomedical engineering professor Richard Rabbitt. Researchers from the University of Utah, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the University of Mississippi have discovered how that happens and have published their findings in the recent issue of Scientific Reports. It is a condition in which a person can feel the same imbalance effects of being drunk just by hearing certain tones, even from the sound of someone's voice or a musical instrument. It has been estimated that 1 in 100 people around the world have a congenital inner ear condition known as semicircular canal dehiscence, a thinning of the bone enclosing the inner ear that can lead to vertigo in response to certain sounds, changes in atmospheric pressure or coughing.
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