Mathematical Model Helps to Understand Ringing in the Ear (Brazil)

[Leonardo Aguiar]

An institute of Mathematics Science here in Brazil (Cemeai) is making a study where they make a map of the brain of someone with Tinnitus, gathering cognitive parameters.

They went after people who got "cured" and made comparisons with them. At least the subjects they analyzed, all of them had succeeded with a combination of treatments.

It is in portuguese, sorry, but google may help translating:

https://translate.google.com/transl...ender-o-zumbido-no-ouvido/&edit-text=&act=url

This study began by the iranian Iman Ghodratitoostani.

 

[jdjd09]

What were the combinations of treatment?

 

[Leonardo Aguiar]

What were the combinations of treatment?

They didn't mention anything specific in this article, just that everyone they analyzed who got "cured" had a combination of treatments.

I sent them an email with some questions, this one among them.

But, honestly, I am probably wrong, if I would guess the result of this study, it would not be a combination of treatments as solution for the tinnitus, I imagine that they will find out that the belief in a "treatment" triggers a new way of perceiving things, and gradually the tinnitus will fade away from the field of awareness, brain plasticity.

But I am definitely wrong, don't worry.

 

[RB2014]

They said they would apply the technology in the production of hearing aides....
Maybe a sound therapy along with some type of CBT training yourself not to pay any attention to T. I'm not really sure either of what they are proposing.

Whatever they come up with will only be temporary and if you stop whatever it is they are going to try the tinnitus will only return.

We need to get to the root of the cause of this disease.

Personally , until we can figure out what is wrong and then reprogram stem cells to go fix it, I really don't see anything that is really going to help us. I don't think we are ever going to see a magic pill that makes it go away or any type of technology that gets built into a hearing aide.

 

[Rasmus]

if something could help temporary i would still do it. If its something you can keep doing without any site effect of couse

 

[Leonardo Aguiar]

We need to get to the root of the cause of this disease.

Personally , until we can figure out what is wrong and then reprogram stem cells to go fix it, I really don't see anything that is really going to help us. I don't think we are ever going to see a magic pill that makes it go away or any type of technology that gets built into a hearing aide.

Sorry to disagree. I am pretty convinced that Tinnitus is a neural function, and this is one of the researches that may confirm it.
I am no doctor, but if this is true, there will be nothing for the steam cells to fix, unless the tinnitus was cause by hearing loss.
In fact, I am quite optimistic with this new line of research.

I'm hoping for the best for all of us.

Here is more information:

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnins.2016.00370/full

 

[Samir]

Charlie Eppes: We all use math every day: to predict weather, to tell time, to handle money. Math is more than formulas or equations; it's logic, it's rationality, it's using your mind to solve the biggest mysteries we know.

Several animal models have attempted to explain tinnitus by revealing its physiological characteristics in different processing centers of the auditory system. In the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN), enhanced firing rates were distinguished after intense acoustic exposure (Kaltenbach et al., 1998; Brozoski et al., 2002; Chang et al., 2002). In the inferior colliculus, elevated firing rates were distinguished after large doses of salicylate induction (Jastreboff and Sasaki, 1986; Chen and Jastreboff, 1995). In addition, it has been established that noise trauma generates hyperactivity in the auditory cortex (Eggermont and Komiya, 2000; Seki and Eggermont, 2003; Zhang et al., 2011). Other tinnitus-related animal studies include the following, tonotopic reorganization in auditory cortex (Eggermont and Roberts, 2004; Eggermont, 2006; Stolzberg et al., 2011), increase in spontaneous activity in DCN and the inferior colliculus (Kaltenbach and McCaslin, 1996; Zhang and Kaltenbach, 1998; Noreña and Eggermont, 2003), magnification in auditory central gain (Sun et al., 2009; Zeng, 2013; Auerbach et al., 2014), and synchronization of neuronal activities (Strauss et al., 2005, 2008; Dominguez et al., 2006; Lorenz et al., 2009). Moreover, a recent imaging study also demonstrated that different inhibitory and excitatory neurotransmitters modulate the tinnitus-dependent hyperactivity (Middleton et al., 2011).

So there are different kinds of tinnitus and it is thought to result from hyperactivity in different areas of the brain, depending on what triggered it. For noise induced tinnitus, the hyperactivity is in the DCN?

I hope this mathematical approach can shed some new light on this debilitating condition. Anything that helps advance the research of tinnitus is very much welcome.