Technology News

Indonesia hopes to become Indian Ocean tsunami-warning provider by 2011
Indonesia has launched its Tsunami Early Warning System (InaTEWS), with which it hopes to become the Indian Ocean tsunami-warning provider by 2011. ANI

Giant particle smasher to restart in July 2009
An internal report sent to physicists working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN laboratory near Geneva in Switzerland, has instructed them to restart the giant machine by end of July 2009. ANI

Coming soon, empathetic virtual humans
A completely different breed of virtual humans is being developed by French researchers which will be capable of reading and adapting to our emotions. ANI

Silence may cause normal people to hear phantom noises

A Brazilian study has shed more light on tinnitus, by finding that phantom noises, which are often misinterpreted as tinnitus, can be experienced by people with normal hearing in silent situations.

Washington, Jan 1 : A Brazilian study has shed more light on tinnitus, by finding that phantom noises, which are often misinterpreted as tinnitus, can be experienced by people with normal hearing in silent situations.

Tinnitus is an auditory perception that cannot be attributed to an external source.

For the study, researchers at the American Academy of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, examined 66 people with normal hearing and no tinnitus.

They found that among subjects placed in a quiet environment where they were asked to focus on their hearing senses, 68 percent experienced phantom ringing noises similar to that of tinnitus.

This is compared to only 45.5 percent of participants who heard phantom ringing when asked to focus on visual stimuli and not on their hearing, and 19.7 percent of those asked to focus on a task in a quiet environment.

According to the researchers, these findings show that with regards to tinnitus, the role of attention to symptoms, as well as silence, plays a significant role in experience and severity.

The study is published in the January 2008 edition of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery.

ANI