Contrast; a Key in Neurogenesis

https://nei.nih.gov/news/pressrelea...egenerates-neural-connections-between-eye-and

The above study shows that mice could regrow retinal nerves much better when subjected to immense contrasts. Some people here have mentioned that silence is a key to recovering from tinnitus and Dr. Wilden's laser treatment seems to hinge on silence and hearing protection as well.

I wonder if contrasting absolute silence to regular every day sounds would spark favorable synaptogenic conditions in the auditory pathway.

 

I guess the next question would be if and how silence may offset any neural regenesis due to silence making tinnitus more noticeable. While masking can help the brain ignore T, silence may create neural pathways that work against diminishing the sound because it would be hard not to notice T in silence. Hopefully it's not antagonistic or a double-edged sword.

 

The reasoning I would offer is that tinnitus as Susan Shore has investigated it was caused by a reduced potential in the cochlea, and then an increasing potential over the other three synaptic clefts until reaching the brain. As such you might assume a decrease in hearing is causing the increase in unwanted amplification along the rest of the auditory pathway. As would be the case when your microphone is not good enough, it's turned up to hear clearly and so the noise becomes more apparent.
The location of hearing damage and generation of the noise would be separate here. An extreme contrast in audio signal would therefor only restore the part that would aid in regulation of amplification thus pushing down the tinnitus.

 

If true then that suggests that plasticity would take care of the problem regardless of hearing damage, so long as it can be recalibrated using the contrast method. Interesting...

 

Funny you explain this because my better days are when I set the timer on my sound machine to go off after I'm asleep. The day after seems better than if I have the sound machine go all night.

 

One thought I had the other day. This is mostly for people with uneven hearing or with tinnitus in only one ear. When a child has strabismus the first line of treatment ophthalmologists try before surgery is to patch the good eye. Forcing the weak eye to work and not get ignored by the brain. I wonder if this could help with hearing too?

Maybe not, as this is typically done before a certain age.

 

I suppose any sound would keep the auditory system a bit more active including the T. I wonder if inactivity could provide a pause the system needs for some recovery. Since I need to protect my hearing anyway I've ordered some Alpine hearing guards and I'll use them at home where the loudest sound by far is me typing
Maybe the silence will help, we'll see.

 

My T was definitely brought on after constant exposure to loud sounds and headphone use, followed by barotrauma and an unreasonably loud concert (despite wearing plugs). Silence did not help. In fact it gave me hyperacusis. Noise definitely fixed that hyperacusis. But then I found the music making my tinnitus worse. And now when I take breaks from louder music (meaning comfortable level, not blasting) for days or weeks I find that my tinnitus is practically gone. Must have something to do with overstimulation of that part of the brain.

On a more personal level: perhaps I can never enjoy music the way I did when I was younger. Like most things in life, we grow up and out of habits -- and into new ones. It's time for me to stop fighting my inevitable growth.