Posted on 08/14/2002 3:28:07 PM PDT by The Raven
Some 20 million people in the United States have tinnitus, a chronic ringing or whooshing in the ears, and about 4 million of them experience such severe symptoms that "they wonder if they're going insane," says Martin Lenhardt, a biomedical engineer at Virginia Commonwealth University. The cause of the ailment is, in essence, a biological computer error. So Lenhardt has found a way to reprogram the brain and make the maddening sounds go away, temporarily at least.
When people lose the ability to hear very high frequencies— whether due to aging, disease, or exposure to loud noise— the neurons in the brain that used to process those sounds start to respond to a lower frequency instead. At the same time, those neurons may also increase how often they fire without any input, leading to phantom ringing. Lenhardt and his colleagues at the Martha Entenmann Tinnitus Research Center in New York City are reprogramming the neurons to proper functioning by exposing them to high-frequency vibrations.
This audio spectrum shows, in yellow, the frequency range of the vibrations used to treat tinnitus. Courtesy of Martin Lenhardt.
The researchers place a quarter-sized piezoelectric disk behind the patients' ears, which sends the vibrations through the skin and into the temporal bone of the skull. Although these motions bypass the middle ear, they stimulate the neurons, which respond if they were once again being exposed to high-pitch sounds coming from the ear itself. Lenhardt uses music that has been modulated to high frequencies to guide the action of the disk, so that its vibrations have a pattern. "We wanted a rhythmic source, that wasn't too boring," says Lenhardt. Pulsed sound is also a better neural stimulator than steady sound, he says: "We think it has to pulse a little bit to be effective, or you're not paying attention to it." After receiving two months of half-hour-long vibration sessions, conducted twice a week, most of the patients in a small pilot study said their tinnitus had vanished. Symptoms returned within two weeks, however, so Lenhardt expects that repeated sonic treatments will be needed to keep the neurons properly programmed. "But if you can do it in a non-invasive way and only need a little bit of time, this could be a real breakthrough for people who just go crazy with tinnitus," he says. His group has just received FDA approval for the device, called UltraQuiet.
Lenhardt and his colleagues are also working on Tactaid, a complimentary treatment that could relieve tinnitus symptoms immediately but that wouldn't provide long-term relief. Tactaid uses a very low-frequency vibrating disk to stimulate the muscles around the ear. In about a third of tinnitus cases, the symptoms seem to be influenced by a link between the brain's auditory system and the somatosensory system, which is involved in movement and automatic reactions. This connection makes a certain amount of sense: The phantom ringing of tinnitus is much like a type of phantom limb phenomenon, whereby a person can feel that his arm is moving, even when it is not, if the correct part of the brain is stimulated. Hearing is connected to the somatosensory system because some muscular movement occurs when we hear -- something that is more obvious in animals such as cats and dogs that can swivel their ears as they listen.
Tactaid's low-frequency vibrations stimulate the muscles around the ear, creating a signal that travels through the somatosensory pathways. Some of these pathways, in turn, connect to the cochlear nucleus, the part of the brainstem that is first to process sounds. The vibratory signal inhibits the cochlear nucleus, causing a cascade of neural reactions further up in the brain, which ultimately blocks the nerve impulses that people hear as phantom ringing. But as soon as the muscle vibration stops, the tinnitus comes back. Thus Tactaid is a bit like an aspirin for tinnitus, giving spot relief when the ringing is severe but not addressing the cause of the pain. The hope, Lenhardt says, is that Tactaid and UltraQuiet will address both halves of the problem, removing the symptoms right away while reprogramming the neurons in a way that will permanently cancel the ringing.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RELATED WEB SITES: "Cured of the Rings." "Vibrotactile suppression of tinnitus." Martin L. Lenhardt. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol 111, No 5, Pt 2, May 2002. Presented at the 143rd meeting in Pittsburgh, June 3-7, 2002. See http://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.apr02/asa177.html.
"High-Frequency Sound Treatment of Tinnitus" by Martin L. Lenhardt, Douglas G. Richards, Alan G. Madsen, Abraham Shulman, Barbara A. Goldstein, and Robert Guinta is at www.acoustics.org/press/142nd/lenhardt.html.
See more at Lenhardt's Web page: www.tinnitus.vcu.edu.
*Divers with tinnitus ping*
Snickersnee finds that at least half his returning veterans from “the sandbox” and “the rockpile” complain of tinnitus. He tells them to include it in their VA disability claim. An easy 10%! Pass it on.
IIRC Tylenol and Aspirin in high doses can worsen the symptoms also.
I have it also but usually can ignore it. Except when it drowns out the voices. :^)
What? And lose all that valuable advice???
Do other cities have "talking" buses? Nonstop "PLEASE HOLD AH-ON!". Loud pinging (blastingly loud) stop requests. Street name announcements. "Security" updates. All at loud volume! And they never shut up. These buses are SHEER TORTURE. Life is misery, thanks to these buses. Unless the audiologists have been ON one of these buses, they have no idea how constant sound bombardment can affect the quality of one's life.
I've had the exact same thing, since childhood.
Tinnitis is horrible.
I used to have it really bad after a sinus infection, and it lasted for months.
Still, many have had it MUCH worse than me.
NOW, IF THEY COULD CURE ***FLOATERS*** IN THE EYES, I would be thrilled.
If anybody has found something that gets rid of floaters, let me know.
My tinnitis went away afer after a few years, but I still got floaters. I hate them!!!!!!
Thank You! I contracted Tinnitus four years ago due to a bad reaction to a prescription drug. I went back to the doctor and he basically blew me off by telling me it was impossible for this to happen. The drug was Vioxx. It almost drove me insane for a month but I learned to live with it. It’s still extremely annoying.
Ringing here since 1992.....man, it sucks bump.
I sure hope this works! I have had this condition for about 5 years, courtesy of a 155mm Charge 5 White Bag at Fort Sill, OK back in 1967. I try to ignore it, but I would rather not have to.
I went to see Elizabeth yesterday and the darn sound was so loud that the theater canon booms shook my body. Theaters really need to turn the volume down a bit.
I feel for you about the buses!
It stinks.
er....cannon
I got it in March 1982 due to an infection and I just woke up with it one morning. It is really bad. At this very moment as I type this it is extremely loud. As usual it is like a tea kettle is going off inches from my head as it has been every single second since the first week of March 1982. Unbelievable. I had a very rough time the first couple years trying to deal with it. I felt it must account for some suicides. I am glad people on this thread are not making fun of it.
bttt
There is a lot more ambient background noise in modern civilization that really masks this “ringing noise.”
Everytime I go camping or hiking overnight for a few days it is very noticeable to me, because typically wilderness areas are one of the few places where at times it absolutely positively *quiet*. Usually a day or two it backs off quite a bit.
On the eye “floaters” that a few people have mentioned, I don’t really notice mine (they are present at birth inside the globe of the eye, btw) that seems to be another wilderness thing - in desert areas they seem to come out of the woodwork! Maybe it’s a dehydration related thing, or driving long distances thing, since I don’t live in the desert. Hm.
They can zap them with lasers now...
And Mr. Beck, and Mr. Nugent, and Mr. Van Halen, and Mr. Page....
Thank you, and I feel for YOU. I’ve experienced the same thing at movie theaters myself, which is why, on the rare day when I do go, I bring earplugs! Best invention ever.
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