Fighting Back

[Guest guest]

One important physiologic fact that I can bring here is to make

everyone more aware of how audition works.

First: sounds do enter the body either through the ear canal (air)

or via vibrating bones (bone) conduction. Ear plugs (any kind) can

only block out about 30 dB of noise, even if your ears were filled

with cement, because above 30 dB of sound, we begin to see

trasnmission via bone conduction, esp. low fq sounds (rumbles as in

the car or from machines or wiring)

Second: sounds and signals pass directly into the cochlea where

small fiber topped cells are stimulated which send electrical

impulses along a nerve, right into the brainstem area (back of your

head, above your neck). Both ears catch slightly different signals,

in timing and pitch, and when combined in the brainstem area, tell us

complex data such as where the sound is coming from.....signals are

mixed up, organized, combined, and sent upwards toward the middle

brain.

Third: in the oldest part of the brain, which sits in or on top of

the brainstem area, many important survival function for the body are

located: heart beat, breathing, digestion, appetite, waking,

sleeping, sex drive, autonomous functions that we are not aware of

like hormone regulation, and much more. In this oldest part of our

brain, we also find the infamous fight-flight responder, it is so

deep, so instinctive, we do not cognate on it, we do not make an

inventory and decide to do such and such, we simple react!

This last sentence can really help us understand WHY we have such

visceral quick responses to particular stimuli, it is really tied

into our basic desire and need to survive, you can tie it or imagine

it into the need to be so quick when the baby cried because something

was about to eat her! Or us! Or in these days, car honks and we

scramble!

In individuals who suffer from Selective Sound Sensitivity, this

lower portion of our neural anatomy is very active and very much on

red alert for particular sounds, and the reactions are so strong and

often unexplainable or unsupportable using logic, nonetheless, they

happen BEFORE thought clicks in, much of the time.

This is where I begin to use some aspect of cognition to force a tiny

sliver of a doorstop between the signal and the reaction....why some

weeks ago I begin to ask about, is there a gap? Is there a tiny

sliver of second PRIOR to the reactive phase of the syndrome? Can we

insert, in adults, a thinking moment, a mantra, a thread, a point of

light................to begin break that glued together sequence of

signal-reaction...........and then, I realized sound therapy could

also help widen those two polar points in this syndrome.

Ok. I think I will copy this and make a file out of it, so I can

refer to it.

Thank you for joining my site. I read the posts and hope that we

make sense, together.

Marsha , M.S., CCC-A, FAAA

Director Oregon Tinnitus & Hyperacusis Treatment Clinic