Millions of Americans suffer from tinnitus, which is defined by researchers at the Kresge Hearing Research Institute of the Department of Otolaryngology at the University of Michigan as the phantom perception of sound in the absence of external stimuli. About 2 million are incapacitated by the negative impacts of tinnitus. People with tinnitus experience varying severity of discomfort—some individuals are minimally disturbed while others sufferer sleep disturbances, poor concentration, depression, and anxiety. Fortunately, a recently published study entitled "Auditory-somatosensory bimodal stimulation desynchronizes brain circuitry to reduce tinnitus in guinea pigs and humans" reported that there is a promising technology that may help sufferers reduce their tinnitus.
Here's a technical explanation in the study: Tinnitus is believed to result from the impairment of physiological regulatory mechanism of neural synchrony from the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DNC) to the neural ensembles along the auditory pathway. The DNC is where the initial multisensory integration of neural inputs from the auditory nerve, auditory midbrain, auditory cortex, trigeminal and cervical ganglia, spinal trigeminal nucleus, and dorsal column nuclei happens. Research in animals reveals that increased instinctive cross-neural activity of DCN's output neurons, the fusiform cells, results in behavioral evidence of tinnitus.
University of Michigan Medical School professor Susan Shore, PhD, the lead researcher of the study, has a less technical answer. In an article, Shore said that the specific the region of the brainstem, the DNC, is the root of tinnitus. "When the main neurons in this region, called fusiform cells, become hyperactive and synchronize with one another, the phantom signal is transmitted into other centers where perception occurs," she explained.
"If we can stop these signals, we can stop tinnitus," said Shore. "That is what our approach attempts to do, and we're encouraged by these initial parallel results in animals and humans."
The research, which studied fusiform cells and their role in tinnitus perception, used a dual-stimulus approach called targeted bimodal auditory-somatosensory stimulation to incite long-term depression (LTD) in the cochlear nucleus and to beneficially reset the activity of the fusiform cells. The experimental approach was delivered to guinea pigs for 25 days. The same bimodal treatment was administered to 20 human subjects for 28 days. The results are encouraging. The study concludes that bimodal auditory-somatosensory stimulation may suppress chronic tinnitus in patients.
While the tinnitus treatment offered by this research is promising, it remains to be experimental and commercially unavailable. The human test subjects were limited to those sufferers capable of temporarily altering their symptoms through clenching of jaws, sticking out of tongues, or turning/flexing of necks. There will be another clinical trial this year.
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