It's harder to hear things when yawning (as anyone who has done any formal education can attest). Wouldn't it be great if all that physiology could be triggered on demand for noise isolation purposes?

Block out that noisy party next door by attaching electrodes to your temples, you'll be sleeping like a baby - albeit one with the contorted face of a dying vampire!

Side benefit is the kids will stop trying to sleep in your bed because they'll come in, take one look at the Weeping Angel from Doctor Who lying there, and decide they're better off taking their chances alone in the dark.
-- oscil8, May 14 2016

Transcranial magnetic stimulation https://en.wikipedi...agnetic_stimulation
"effects of TMS include ... transient hearing loss" [8th of 7, May 14 2016]

What could possibly go wrong ?

[+]
-- 8th of 7, May 14 2016


Actually, you know, this is not such a stupid idea.

There is a little muscle in the middle ear called the tensor tympani, whose job is to dampen loud sounds and self-generate noises like chewing. It is the muscle that contracts when you yawn.

It ought to be possible (and I use that word loosely) to stimulate that muscle to contract. Yawning not necessary.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, May 14 2016


Applying pure reason from the position of the armchair: if sympathetic tone prepares one for battle, changes in the sensorium conducive to battle-readiness should occur. Dilated pupils for maximal vision - check. Raised scruff for appearance of bigness: check. Raised heartbeat and blood pressure - check. Release of procoagulant factors - check. It is reasonable to assume that like the pupils, the ear muscles which dampen noise should be on maximal undamp under these circumstances.

Now considering absence of sympathetic tone or perhaps increased parasympathetic tone, as might occur with certain drugs or an interruption of the sympathetic chain, the opposite of all that stuff should occur. One might isolate this action to the ears using parasympathetic agonist eardrops.

The validity of these conclusions will take but a moment to check.

In the meantime I see the bun has been deep fried to a golden brownness. Here you go, oscil8.
-- bungston, May 14 2016


Considering now the original premise, it should be possible to induce current within the appropriate nerve by use of an external magnetic field, such as an MRI.
-- bungston, May 14 2016


// MRI //

Transcranial magnetic stimulation - TMS.

<link>
-- 8th of 7, May 14 2016



random, halfbakery