Tinnitus Is Pain of the Auditory System

http://www.tinnitusjournal.com/detalhe_artigo.asp?id=531

 

"Similarities between chronic pain and tinnitus suggest the hypothesis of a final common pathway for tinnitus, pain and all sensations-aberrant/normal"

There goes your - T and pain do not share the same pathway- theory, @Dr. Nagler

 

And there's also that other discovery that was made earlier this year about newly found pain receptors. Here's the thread: https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...-implicated-in-tinnitus-and-hyperacusis.8293/

 

Tinnitus can hurt and not for a hyperacus point of view,I take my aids out the tinnitus gets louder and my ears start to hurt

 

I have the same thing, I have been told by Dr Nagler that this is not tinnitus causing the pain. Mine comes on heavy at night when I put my ear to the pillow, my T blows up and the screaching high volume hurts in the same way as if you were to put headphones on, turn the volume up until it actually caused physical pain to the ear.

 

The brain projects pain onto the broken part, crudely speaking. If you amputate your leg, it will hurt, but, its supposed to stop once it heals up. If it still hurts even though it is healed, this is called phantom limb pain syndrome. It has been demonstrated by an Indian neuroscientist that by tricking the brain by using a mirror image of his other leg in place of the missing limb, then the pain goes away! Remove the mirror and the excruciating pain comes back - how f-ed up is that?...
Problem with tinnitus you cannot really trick the brain into believing you have regained hearing, but in some cases as with Carlover's hearing aids, they trick the brain on some frequencies and relieve the pain.
Hearing aids are limited to up to about 7khz amplification, so its not enough to bring back the high frequencies....Dont know why they cant invent a 1-20khz amplifier and at least use it during sleep with no T or pain....

 

I don't think it's that simple. The problem is that one generally doesn't go completely deaf in certain frequencies. You can still pick up sounds of high frequencies it just takes a bit higher volume. It's not like with a missing limb where it's all or nothing. A leg is either missing or it's not.

It's not the problem of not hearing sounds of some frequencies. You could actually spend your whole life in a padded room and never hear any sounds higher then let's say 60 db and not even in frequencies higher then 10 000 hz. You don't develop tinnitus because of that. You develop tinnitus because your brain has certain pathways of neuronal input that no longer work as they should.

Even though they might have similarities you shouldn't compare our senses like that, because they are still different. When you hold a mirror and use it to trick the brain you are actually using a different sense, namely your sight, to trick the brain and it doesn't make the pain go away completely. It can relieve the pain in some people. It's a bit different then removing it completely for everybody.

Also if you were to use an amplifier that amplifies all frequencies, if you don't actually need it to hear normal sounds, you would probably end up damaging your hearing even more which would then most likely worsen your condition.

 

Sorry but you dont make any sense at all.
You dont need to lose all your limb - it could be 1/10 of a limb - you can still get phantom pain, just like you lost half thet hearing at 12 khz - your brain is not stupid - it KNOWS its gone.

Second, if you live in a soundproof room - you WILL develop some tinnitus depending on how much hearing loss you really have, as your brain starts focusing in on itself.

In the experiment, the pain was relieved completely, if I recall correctly. It does not happen in all people, but some....they cannot explain why yet....

There are still many unanswered questions, thats for sure.

 

Craig had pain with his tinnitus @dan as you must remember..I've seen many folks with painful ears on bad T days in other boards.

 

Yes thats very true, and I was going to bring his example up, but then thought maybe let him just RIP.

 

What I was trying to say is that sounds are external. You are not forced to listen to or hear certain sounds so whether that sound at 12 khz is 20 db or 30 db doesn't matter. It just happens to be that now it has to be 30 db for you to be able to hear it. If that makes any sense... I don't know how to explain it.

And just like you said your brain knows it's gone so no hearing aids would help with that.

Why pain is sometimes involved with tinnitus is because of the wiring in the DCN (Dorsal Cochlear Nucleus, the place in the brain where inputs from the ears go before being wired through to the auditory cortex). It is believed that in some people that suffer from T. (mostly people with somatic T.) the signals from the pain and touch receptors in the face and neck can cross over to the DCN to produce or enhance T.

This is thought to happen when signals from the ears decrease due to hearing loss. Then the brain takes input from another source to compensate for it and it so happens to be from what is nearby. Which is the face and neck.

So if this is true and happens to you, you can in a sense actually hear the pain you have in the face and/or neck! (the ears also belong to that area)

That could mean that when you get punched in the face it doesn't hurt as much but instead spikes your T. LOL

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120201092301.htm

 

Yes but they trick the brain thinking its back
You want to know something funny and sad?
I actually emailed Dr.Shore- the researcher in your link, and she does not know anything about how the thalamus is involved in tinnitus. She said she doesnt know about the thalamus "thingie".....

 

Or we could just bring it back instead of fooling the brain. They've done it in mice so perhaps sometime in my lifetime they might decide to try to cure something in humans for once. So far they've managed to cure just about everything in mice so maybe we should start curing people instead

 

About the thalamus "thingie" I think you mean HIFU, right? That is a bit controversial however they've managed to diagnose people with tinnitus (tell whether someone has tinnitus or not by scanning their brain) so I guess they're on to something. They've also treated people for other ailments and discovered that by doing so they've accidentally also cured their tinnitus so just because one researcher doesn't know about one thing doesn't have to mean it's not true. I'm sure there are tinnitus researchers that haven't heard of Dr. Shore's work.

The way that works is that different parts of the brain that are responsible for sound such as the DCN, auditory cortex and so on are normally in synchrony with this part of the thalamus. In T. patients the synchronization is messed up so by killing off some cells in the thalamus they bring the neuron firing patterns back to normal. Or so I've come to understand it.

 

I do beleive this explanation makes the most sense out of everything I've read so far. The auditory system is high priority for the brain so it attempts to boost incoming signals. By doing so, other sensory inputs that happen to be close to the ear are ''heard'' by the auditory system. This is probably why most people can alter their tinnitus tones by moving their jaw, yawning or moving their necks.

 

Was this already posted?
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/no...g-ringing-in-your-ears?trk_source=recommended

 

Yes

 

@jeannie
Chronic pain is like fibro right?
these two maybe linked

 

Chronic pain and t involve the same neural pathways i think

 

Widespread chronic pain is one of the symptoms of fibro. Others are non restorative sleep..depression..and cfs

 

My father had Fibro,hearing loss but no T?Was there any updates as to this research?

 

wow, its way to interesting...
how a constant pain and a constar sound comes from the same pathway...

 

This is exactly how I feel when I'm having a bad night. It isn't always the noise that makes me struggle nowadays - it's more like the feeling of T that really puts the last nail in the coffin.

 

This can be true since Katadolon, a fibro drug can work for some T cases.