THE mere sound of a busy tone on the phone or a child's squeals are enough to give some people vertigoand a study of a pile of old skulls now suggests the condition is largely hereditary.
Lloyd Minor and his colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Center for Hearing and Balance in Baltimore, Maryland, first described the rare disorder, known as superior canal dehiscence syndrome (SCDS), in 1995. Patients feel dizzy and experience an illusion of motion when they hear any fairly loud noiseanything from music to cheering at a sporting event.
Minor's team has traced the problem to a fracture in the temporal bone, directly above the ear's upper balance canal. The hole means that noises aren't processed properly and instead create strong vibrations, leading to vertigo.
Many patients have been relieved to discover the disorder has a physical cause. "People are worried that it's something horrible in their heads," ...
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