I read about a phenomena called "otoacoustic emission" in an article at newscientist.com where there was a dog who seemed to be humming every where he went. Here's an excerpt from the article - "In this condition, the normal hearing pathways in the ears are somehow reversed, so that the cochlear efferent nerve fibers stimulate outer hair cells to vibrate and make a noise. Other parts of the ear such as the tympanic membrane can then amplify the sound, until you end up like Zoe, humming wherever you go. " Zoe, as you might have guessed, was the dog.

Never letting a weird thought go to waste, here's a suggestion on how we could turn that condition into something useful. People who have had a severe spinal injury can enter what is called a 'locked-in state", meaning they are so paralyzed that there's no way for them to communicate with the outside world. If a cochlear implant was designed so that it could create these otoacoustic emissions on demand then it might give these patients a way to communicate. With a little biofeedback training they could vary the sound waves that are being emitted and establish a new form of communication.

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