I don't get it, 80db is enough to mentally torture a prisoner (even short term) according to the CIA. White noise at 79db is used to disorient and break the will of detainees.
How loud is your T if you can hear it over your motorcycle? How is it that you can beat something that is meant to be unbeatable and "mentally break" a person?
So -- a couple comments here. I can hear my tinnitus over my (95 db) motorcycle. This does not mean the tinnitus is nearly as loud as the bike -- the tinnitus is an internal noise, so it's sort of at the "base" of my perceptual awareness, it's available to me to perceive regardless of background noise, excluding noise which sounds "similar enough" to the tinnitus to confuse my brain (crickets, running water, etc). There is a tangent there, that we are
all prisoners in our bodies, confined in them, stuck with the way they function... but that's not CIA torture techniques, it's fundamental existential angst. Some people deal with that more easily than others.
The torture analogy never holds water with me. Tinnitus is an annoying artifact of the way my body works. This to me is simply not in any way comparable to the psychological stress of being confined against my will and subjected to loud noise by rational actors who have their own consciousness. To me, these things are simply not the same in any way, shape or form.
Please tell me your secret. I'm sure the CIA would like to know as well, obviously their scientists have some work to do in discovering new torture methods.
Thanks.
Tinnitus volume, and conscious filtering/distress, arise from related but different parts of the brain. The noise is hyperactivity in the auditory cortex and cranial nerves. The ability of the mind to filter it (or not) arises deeper, the thalamus and insula are strongly implicated in imaging studies.
Therefore, people's ability to filter out the noise from conscious perception, is at least partially independent of the sound itself. This is why some people have relatively "loud" tinnitus (extreme hyperactivity in the auditory pathways) but report relatively little distress (higher functioning thalamic gates / insula -- the signal must pass through the insula before it can hit the limbic system and cause an emotional response, because the GABA-mediated inhibitory circuits which end in the limbic system, ascend from the thalamus through the insula. Likewise, some people with relatively "quiet" tinnitus (lesser hyperactivity in the auditory pathways) have extreme distress (less functional thalamic gates / insula).
To some limited degree, the function (and even structure) of these brain areas work in a feedback loop with conscious thought. I believe that all habituation therapies are more or less aimed at working that feedback loop in a positive direction. don't believe this is all wishful thinking and smoke and mirrors, because there's a growing body of imaging studies showing functional and structural changes in these same brain areas after diligent practice of various conscious strategies.
That said, I don't believe that such strategies work for everyone, nor do I believe that people for whom they don't work are doing anything "wrong", or "not trying hard enough": everyone's brain and body is different. I can lift weights and eat tons of protein for weeks and barely put on muscle mass. I have friends who can build mass easily with much less effort. Likewise, I think some people are blessed with brains which are more prone to positive neuroplastic changes, and other people have more difficult obstacles to overcome.
Just my two cents, as someone who has thought about these concepts far too much.
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