Music Ear Syndrome (MES) is a condition triggered by silence or background sounds that cause some people to hear phantom music , singing, or voices. MES music and singing can either by clear or vague whereas voices are usually always vague and indistinct.
Musical hallucinations usually occur in older people. Several conditions are possible causes or predisposing factors, including hearing impairment, brain damage, epilepsy, intoxications and psychiatric disorders such as depression, schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Musical ear syndrome, or MES, is a condition that causes auditory hallucinations where patients hear music or singing that isn't there. The condition normally occurs in those already suffering from hearing loss and is a result of the brain 'filling in the gaps' caused by the hearing loss.
Musical hallucinations are infrequent and have been described in 0.16% of a general hospital population. The auditory hallucinations are popularly associated with psychiatric disorders or degenerative neurological diseases but there may be other causes in which the patient evolves favorably with treatment.
If you experience auditory hallucinations just as you're falling asleep (hypnogogic hallucinations) or waking up (hypnopompic hallucinations), it's considered normal and usually not a cause for concern. Up to 70% of people experience these types of hallucinations at least once.
Is Musical Ear Syndrome Common? The few studies published in journals suggest only about 20% of those with tinnitus experience musical ear syndrome — that means about 3% of the general population.
If you're hearing a humming noise in walls at night, it could be due to a half-opened vent. If your air pressure is on high and you have a vent that isn't fully open, it can cause irritating vibrating noises. This is a harmless issue that can be resolved by lowering your air pressure or fully opening your vent.
Brain tumors (both cancerous and benign) can cause auditory hallucinations, particularly if they affect certain parts of the brain. Hallucinations can occur if a tumor presses on a nerve that sends sound signals from the ear to the brain. Or if it's in the part of the brain that processes this information.
Anxiety can cause someone to “hear things.” Examples of this can be complex, from hearing one's name, to hearing popping sounds. Most of this is due to anxiety's heightened awareness as a result of the fight or flight system.
Musical hallucinations in schizophrenia have often been described as having religious content. The association between musical hallucinations and religious themes is expected as the delusions of a person with schizophrenia often contain religious themes.
Hearing voices speaking when there is no-one there is known as an auditory hallucination. Voices can talk about very personal matters, which can be quite frightening. Often, other sounds like music, animal calls and the telephone ringing can be heard.
Medications noted to trigger musical hallucinations are antipsychotics (olanzapine and quetiapine), antidepressants (clomipramine), antiepileptic medications (carbamazepine and valproate), and donepezil.
Earworms or stuck song syndrome
Recurring tunes that involuntarily pop up and stick in your mind are common: up to 98% of the Western population has experienced these earworms. Usually, stuck songs are catchy tunes, popping up spontaneously or triggered by emotions, associations, or by hearing the melody.
Although MES is not a “scary” disease, persistant hallucinations may disturb patients and affect their quality of life. Patients should be educated about the syndrome and firmly assured that they are not mentally ill. There is no standard consensus for treatment.
Chewing gum is one easy method known to help get rid of earworms. This is tied to the theory that jaw movement affects, or reduces, musical cognition. If an earworm persists for longer than 24 hours it may be necessary to visit a doctor, as earworms can be related to brain system disorders.
Common descriptions of anxiety hallucinations include: You see or hear something that isn't real. You were initially convinced you saw or heard something, but upon closer investigation, what you saw or heard didn't occur. You have a taste of a particular food, yet you didn't eat anything that would cause that taste.
According to Evers and Ellgers, some other major psychiatric disorders that contribute to musical hallucinations include schizophrenia and depression. Some patients who have schizophrenia experience musical hallucinations due to their ongoing psychosis, but there are some cases that do so without psychosis.
Brain computed tomography (CT) was notable for possible posterior cerebral and cerebellar edema. His confusion and agitation gradually resolved with successful blood pressure management. This is the first reported case of extreme, agitated behaviors and auditory hallucinations in a patient with hypertensive crisis.
Musical hallucinations are often noted to occur in cognitively normal people; however, anecdotally musical hallucinations have been described to occur in the presence of dementia (Mori et al., 2006; Berger, 2015).
Headaches are the most common symptom of brain tumors. Headaches happen in about half of people with brain tumors. Headaches can happen if a growing brain tumor presses on healthy cells around it. Or a brain tumor can cause swelling in the brain that increases pressure in the head and leads to a headache.
When you can hear sounds inside your head that are created by your hearing system, not your environment, the condition is known as tinnitus. It could be ringing, humming, pulsing or hissing. It is more prominent in quiet areas or at night. It usually has no particular cause, but can still be treated.
What Is That Scratching in My Walls at Night? If you hear scratching in your walls at night, it could be mice, rats, squirrels, raccoons, bats, termites, carpenter ants, or roach colonies. By far, the most common nighttime wall-scratchers are mice, and they're most likely the pests who are disturbing your sleep.
Rats and mice are the most likely culprits for noises in your walls at night. Since rodents don't weigh much, you typically don't hear them until they start clawing or scratching.
The brain is going the extra step of interpreting and experiencing the data as music. Apophenia is where the brain perceives pseudo-patterns in random data; Pareidolia is where the brain perceives a pattern that does not exist specifically in audio or visual data.