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Oliver Sacks – Hallucinations

Prolonged silence or auditory monotony may also cause auditory hallucinations; I have had patients report experiencing these while on meditation retreats or on a long sea voyage.

Jessica K., a young woman with no hearing loss, wrote to me that her hallucinations come with auditory monotony:

"In the presence of white noise such as running water or a central air conditioning system, I frequently hear music or voices.

I hear it distinctly (and in the early days, often went searching for the radio that must have been left on in another room), but in the instance of music with lyrics or voices (which always sound like a talk radio program or something, not real conversation) I never hear it well enough to distinguish the words.

I never hear these things unless they are "embedded," so to speak, in white noise, and only if there are not other competing sounds"