In other words, your brain tries to find meaning in all the sensory input it receives. This happens because your brain is a pattern recognition machine. However, your brain modifies this fan noise so you perceive it as music.
However, in the second category, the phantom music or singing is triggered by an unrelated external background sound whether the person is aware of this sound or not.įor example, you begin hearing music when you are near a fan. In the first category, there is no apparent external stimulus for the phantom sounds your are hearing (a truly phantom sound). Now here’s where it gets really interesting. For example, you might “know” it is an man announcing a game, but you can’t understand any/many words. If you hear voices, typically they sound vague-like a TV playing in another room. If you hear music or singing, it may be vague or clear. Typically, you would hear what sounds like music, singing or voices. Musical Ear Syndrome is a relatively common phenomenon where you hear non-tinnitus, phantom sounds that are not of a psychiatric nature. Don’t let the weird Greek words in the title scare you off from reading this fascinating article on one category of Musical Ear Syndrome (MES).