The Brain: "Ringing in the Ears" Actually Goes Much Deeper Than That

i found this on a site: "http://discovermagazine.com/2010/oct/26-ringing-in-the-ears-goes-much-deeper"

Normally, we hear sounds only when they make our eardrums vibrate. The vibrations cause nerve hairs in the inner ear to shiver, and that triggers electric signals that travel along the auditory nerve into the brain. One of their first stops is a patch of gray matter called the auditory cortex. Each nerve hair is tuned to a particular frequency of sound and excites only certain neurons in the auditory cortex. As a result, the neurons in the auditory cortex form what is known as a tone map. The neurons at one end of the auditory cortex are tuned to low frequencies; the farther you go toward the other end, the higher the tuning of the neurons.

This sound system comes with an elaborate feedback mechanism. Neurons do more than just relay signals forward into the brain. They also signal back down the line, reaching out to neighboring neurons tuned to nearby frequencies, exciting some and muzzling others. These feedback controls allow us to sift through incoming sounds for the most important information, so that we are not overwhelmed by meaningless noise. In young brains, the neurons and their feedback controls grow and link up to each other. Even in adulthood, experiencing new sounds can rewire the auditory cortex. If a rat is trained to recognize sounds at a particular frequency, the corresponding region of the tone map will get bigger.

Tinnitus arises when this flexibility goes bad. Things may start to go awry when toxic drugs, loud noises, or even whiplash cause damage to the nerve hairs in the ears. The injured nerve hairs can no longer send signals from the ear to the tone map. Bereft of incoming signals, the neurons undergo a peculiar transformation: They start to eavesdrop on their neighbors, firing in response to other frequencies. They even start to fire sometimes without any incoming signals. As the brain’s feedback controls get rewired, the neurons end up in a self-sustaining loop, producing a constant ringing. That is why tinnitus often doesn’t go away when people get their auditory nerve surgically cut.

 

Hi Emil, thanks for the link. Ultimately we need a way to tap into the audio cortex and stop those phantom neurons from firing.....

 

They already found a way to do that....directly and indirectly! By stimulating the nucleus basalis (directly, rats only) or the vagus nerve (indirectly, human trials) they have a powerful tool to control cortical plasticity.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3295231/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24255953
http://web.mit.edu/msur/www/publications/2012_ChenSugihara_etal.pdf

They also found that frontal cortex can influence cortical plasticity (part of the brain that takes part in: reward, attention, short-term memory tasks, planning, and motivation)
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/33/46/18134.full

And prefrontal cortex activity is at least partly responsible for maintaining the hyperactive network...:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/7/80#B8


BTW: the auditory cortex is more or less the last stop, not the first. I believe the Dorsal cochlear nucleus
is the first stop. That is a very complex multi modal relay station. It is believed to be responsible for our ability to hear sound in "3D" e.g. find the location of a sound source.

Anyway, I believe that targeted brain plasticity is the best change of a cure for this condition....

 

Isnt this what Autifony aims to do? Stop those overactive neurons?

 

They are also trying to reduce hyperactivity, but via a different route.

 

I found this pretty interesting, it's weird how our ears/brain can make such sound. I sometimes listen to my T and think how weird it is and why is it there.

 

Thanks for the information.

 

It's very strange, the noise I mean. But I suppose we are hearing our brains. What I've wondered is, is the noises always there, in the background with a trigger needed to make it tinnitus or do they fire up as tinnitus when a trigger is produced?

 

Is this the same for pulsing tinnitus?

 

Usually pulsating T is caused by blood circulation issues and/or tumors. And for most of the people it syncs with there heart beat.

 

I have no issues with either. Had an MRI. Mysterious.

 

Mri doesn't always pick up everything sometimes they miss it or too small to get caught in the scan..Or might be an transient block which caused damage not necessarily in brain leaving behind a small scar in blood vessel.
My best guess If the pulsating T syncs with your heart beat its definitely linked with blood circulation.
In your case you can serapatase its an enzymes which helps eat away any blockages in blood vessels.

 

Had my carotid arteries checked for blockage with ultra sound... very clear arteries. I was pleasantly surprised.

I tried serrapeptase long ago... nada.

Thank you for the suggestion though.

 

http://discovermagazine.com/2010/oct/26-ringing-in-the-ears-goes-much-deeper


This was an interesting read. It may have been posted 4 years ago but it contains interesting info on our condition and possible cures in the future.