Interesting story of bilateral tinnitus development

Well very interestingly the other day I was reading a hearing health magazine and there was a perticular story that was interesting to say the least.It was a about young woman in the prime of her life with no health problems to really mention.After a while she noticed that she was having a funny feeling with her left ear and was noticeing some hearing loss.She decided to have it investigated and 1 MRI later and the unthinkable was reality,she was diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma and surgery plus total deafness on one side was her only option.This is where it gets a bit interesting as this lovely young lady describes her symptoms post op,she had facial paralises which eventually got better and her facial feeling and control had returned.Now she had lost all her hearing in the left ear and wasnt experiencing T pre op,but after the surgery she states that she had a high pitched ringing sound in her right ear for about two weeks post op.Whats interesting about this is that her right ear was perfectly fine and healthy and wasnt even touched during surgery,surgeons never went near the right ear but yet she had developed T as a result of the surgery on her opposite ear.It proves a very good point to which I find very interesting,the trauma from her left ear surgery had created T in the opposite ear and without the right ear being touched why was it ringing.It all points to a central cause,that the T sound isnt really caused by the ear at all but more so the auditory brain whether it be loss of input or overactivity but a perfectly healthy ear was still experiencing T.About two weeks later it disappeared for the young lady but it raised another question,why did it stop.We all consider a hearing trauma to be a shotgun blast or an explosion but this young lady had experienced the worst kind of trauma,total destruction but yet her T disappeared.Is it that this overactivity in the auditory brain switches off for some but for others it doesnt and if so why.Its like the auditory brain is stuck in the on position and we just need something to flick it off again.

 

I don't know if this question has been asked or covered. But do people who have hearing loss not get T? Whether it's minor or moderate or profound? I've tried to google it but nothing really comes up. The notion is that hearing loss = T, but is that true all of the time? We all know about people with supposedly perfect hearing who get T, but what about the other way around?

If the answer is yes, that people who do experience hearing loss, and suffer damage to their ear hairs which should set off the T, and yet it doesn't, then that should demonstrate that of course T is really in the brain. And not everyone's brain will or does respond to loss of signal from the cochlea with ringing. And something else is going wrong with T sufferers that doesn't happen to everyone with some meaningful level of cochlear damage.

 

I know two profoundly deaf people and they have no T...

 

There are many people with hearing loss (slight, moderate and severe) that do not have T. Hearing loss does not equal T. I think your conclusion is right. T is in the brain, and it does not affect everyone even if they damaged their hair cells. I can't prove this, but after my research so far it seems like the most logical explanation. I think @bill 112 knows a lot about this though and can explain it better than me.

 

From my understanding when people lose output from one ear the other often rings. Reason being the working ear actually increases output to the brain to compensate but this puts stress on the auditory nerve and in return, ringing of the ear.

Someone posted that explanation here, I believe.

Maybe the auditory cortex of the person's brain doesn't work. If it's gone you can't hear anything, not even tinnitus.

 

That really has puzzled me deeply, I hear perfectly fine but when I went to the ENT he told me I could not hear the high pitch sounds at 4000 decibles because it droped, well I think the reason why I cant hear the low high pitch noise its because my T is alot louder than the high pitch, I can hear better than other people lime my wife,Co workers, and even younger people, so I have no hearing loss, I absolutely dont think the problem is in the ears or the choclea but in.the brain, its a very frustrating mistery!

 

I have come to suspect that it might just be a cloged artery in our brain that goes to our hearing perception in the brain, maybe caused by a bad diet or abuse of any drug or alcohol along with allergies, im no doctor but its just a thought!

 

the most profoundly deaf can't hear his phone ring but he can communicate without too much problem if he's looking at you while you speak.

 

T man not necessarily so,if an individual was to block his ear for an hour or so that doesnt automatically mean the oposite ear will ring for the loss of input for the other ear this never seems to be the case.If this happened for any loss of input to one ear the other ear would ring,an example would be if you had an individual without T who slept for lets say 8 hours on his right ear that would mean the left ear would ring as the right ear is not getting its usual input as its buried in a pillow.Also if the auditory cortex was not working this would appear on an MRI as total mass death and the only true way for the auditory cortex to die or be severely damaged is through disease or traumatic brain injury and is actually considered quite rare.Auditory cortex destruction is a very very rare type of deafness and is a very unusual kind of deafness,its been stated before that someone who had auditory cortex deafness could believe it or not could still react to sound stimulous even though they could not hear it as alot of sounds interpretation actually happens much lower in the auditory brain before it even reaches the auditory cortex.

 

My theory is that when there is anything going on in the head or neck area such as injury, recovery from some types of surgery and inflammation close to the auditory nerves from the ears to the brain we hear a form of T. Imo ot explains different T sounds and spikes. Its our bodies own built in alarm system specifically for the head n neck.

 

bill says it all....whatever the peripheral cause....drugs,shotguns, etc, it's a central dysfunction that should be correctable.
the missing link reason why people get tinnitus is because it's associated with prolonged or sudden adrenal stress.
Deteriorating deafness and acoustic shock/overload work on different timelines.
Even listening to loud music you like might translate as a prolonged stress event for the brain. A form of shock.
The shock factor, sudden or long-term, something that puts the brain in crisis, is key here I'd say.
Many recover. Plasticity.