Can Silence Drive You Crazy?

Sometimes, you need a little peace and quiet to stay sane. But it turns out too much quiet can drive you crazy- or at least make you hallucinate. That's what scientists at Orfield Labs in Minneapolis have found by studying how subjects react in their anechoic chamber, also known as the world's quietest room.

How does silence make you hallucinate?

'When it's quiet, ears will adapt,' says the company's founder and president, Steven Orfield. 'The quieter the room, the more things you hear. ... As the minutes tick by in absolute quiet, the human mind begins to lose its grip, causing test subjects to experience visual and aural hallucinations.

Why is silence so loud?

It's noisy. The brain creates noise to fill the silence, and we hear this as tinnitus. Perhaps only someone with profound deafness can achieve this level of silence, so paradoxically loud. ... I have it easy, and in fact kind of like my tinnitus: it changes pitch from time to time, an ethereal deep outer space keening.