Something I Don't Get with Your Brain Is Trying to Replace the Lost Sound Frequency Theory

My tinnitus is at a very high frequency and is very loud.

Something I don't get with your brain is trying to replace the sound theory... If I had to hear that tone at anytime even with great hearing, it would drive me insane. In fact I used to work as a tech in a television repair shop back in the day and I would often be able to hear the horizontal oscillator at 15,737 Hz (in the US). It would drive me nuts,

So if that is the sound my brain is trying to replace, it is not a normal sound. Why don't people with normal hearing have the same problem?

Or is my brain just picking that tone as the "replacement" sound? If so, gee thanks brain.

 

I never buy that theory. I find it hard to believe that the brain will do something so stupid. The brain just interprets what comes its way, which in case of tinnitus, is the sounds produced by the damaged hair cells that are not the same sounds when they are normal, and hence not interpreted as silence by the brain.

 

I believe you are perverting the theory.
Cochlea nerve cells die, electrical stimuli from cochlea to auditory cortex specific to high frequencies lost becomes interrupted and the brain makes new connection with adjacent aberrant neurons. In no way does the new neuron connection mimic the lost connection to the cochlea nerve cells...which is quite apparent. As you say, the sound that is replaced...in our case at times a rather loud hiss, is...merely a new found connection without any of the refinement of past cochlea nerve to auditory cortex connection. It has no sound signature per se, rather an electrical connection creating a static noise.

A crude facsimile if you will is...a traditional home sound system connecting a music source or digital music file to codec to amplifier to speakers. Now, disconnect the music source and crank up the volume of your amplifier and hear the buzz through your speakers. That is an analog of what we hear with tinnitus...that is, if the theory has veracity which is plausible and believed by many.

 

Its widely believed that neurons unrelated to hearing in the brain are recruited when the cochlea to auditory cortex connection dies. This has been witnessed through imaging. Challenge for scientists has been how to locally 'unsynchronize' these neurons and of course the most famous and relatively non invasive approach being evaluated presently is bi-modal stimulation.

 

But what if temporary tinnitus then? Either of the random variety (15 seconds of ringing that even normal people get), or after a loud concert (ie. the next morning)? There's seem unlikely to have anything to do with neuroplasticity or any other such reconnection process...?

 

I wonder if the visual snow reported by so many Tinnitus sufferers is a result of this "recruiting", where the neurons allocated to vision are re-assigned to help create Tinnitus instead (due to some spectacular, tragic misunderstanding of gigantic proportions) and the visual snow is the result of their absence?

 

there is something going on with that and floaters for sure

 

Hi Matt,
A good question. I would say the majority of people in society have fleeting tinnitus on some level throughout their lives. I have. But the sound signature is different, at least for me. Fleeting tinnitus was always tonal in nature whereas the type of permanent tinnitus I have which varies considerably in volume is more of a hiss. This suggests the origin of the electrical stimuli is directed from another source.

I will provide Dr. Susan Shore's explanation of tinnitus and the predicate of what she believes the origin of much of the tinnitus she tries to extinguish based upon her bi-modal machine.

If you think about it, as mentioned above, if tinnitus...like the hiss many hear is really from dying nerve cells in the cochlea, is would be much harder to morph neuron transmission.

This is from her website:

Hyperactive Fusiform Cells
Results from tests in guinea pigs and the double-blind human study, funded by the Coulter Foundation, validate years of pre-clinical research funded by the National Institutes of Health, including previous tests in guinea pigs.

“The brain, and specifically the region of the brainstem called the dorsal cochlear nucleus, is the root of tinnitus. When the main neurons in this region, called fusiform cells, become hyperactive and synchronize with one another, the phantom signal is transmitted into other centers where perception occurs.

If we can stop these signals, we can stop tinnitus. That is what our approach attempts to do, and we’re encouraged by these initial parallel results in animals and humans.”

---------------------

I asked Greg....one of the most knowledgable people on this forum...Greg from CA...his opinion on why these particular neurons get syncronized to create the phantom sound and he suggested there are a few theories on a plausible pathway between the hearing apparatus and the brain stem.

We are all hopeful, that bi-modal stimulation will help us as a stepping stone to eliminating this abberant neuron recruitment entirely.

What is of course really sad...are all the young people with good hearing that for whatever reason...this area of the brain becomes excited causing tinnitus. Hopefully help is coming for everybody...and soon.

 

Hi Harley,
Yes, there seems to be a networking of 'neural cross talk' linking tinnitus and visual snow as you mention in some people. I don't have this for example but others do.

 

Thanks John,

You make an interesting point about the potential difference between the electrical signals and more pure tones. That said, from what I understand different people have different sounds that vary considerably in their tonality. But perhaps this also differs as per noise-induced, drug-induced, etc.

I'm loosely aware of Dr. Shore's work, but may have to read up on it more. The notion that "the root" of tinnitus is in the brain just doesn't jive well with me. That doesn't mean that we can't cure tinnitus by interrupting specific signal pathways, but suggesting that it's rooted in the brain seems like the equivalent of saying that the root cause of the pain from a bruised shin is in the pain center of your brain. Sure, you can reduce the pain by interfering with this center; but the root cause was still the soccer ball.

But perhaps that's too straightforward a theory to be helpful.

 

Matt, I believe you will enjoy this video on tinnitus and EEG imaging speaking to the heterogeneity of tinnitus subtypes and different areas of the brain affected based upon frequency including the relationship between chronic pain and tinnitus.

Functional Brain Imaging and Tinnitus

You will note in this 2015 presentation, this scientist states that sound and electric stimulus aka bi-modal stimulation maybe a future treatment and we see that playing out now.

 

also...you maybe interested in Dr. Shores roadmap in her relentless pursuit of the truth:

https://experts.umich.edu/discover/publication?and_facet_profiles_author=1367


She is a tinnitus heavyweight for sure based upon her research.

Hopefully the hard learned fruit of her labor and life's work will help countless.

 

Will watch this tonight. Looking forward to it.

The next major tinnitus conference is in Vancouver, and I just got a loose invitation to attend, should I want to consider doing work in this area. Still not positive I do... but we'll see.

 

I hope you consider it if your schedule supports. Seems that your education and interest would be a perfect fit.
I look forward to your comments on the video.

 

I've often wondered about this too. From what I've read it seems that crystals being dislodged from the ear or thyroid issues lead to a roaring sound, while drug-induced leads to a high pitched sound for certain medications at least...

One thing that would be really neat is if we could harness the size of TT to conduct some survey research on type of tinnitus (what it sounds like, how loud, somatic/reactive/present with hearing loss etc), presumed cause, demographic characteristics like Age Country of residence Ethnicity, and whether habituation or remission of symptoms occurred. With almost 29,000 members even if 1 in 10 responded that is still a significant amount of data... There could even be an option for individuals to anonymously upload their 23andme/promethease results giving us biomarker data to sift through... Of course, the t population here is likely biased towards more severe sufferers but it would still be extremely valuable and I'm not sure it's ever been done before. Although not a cure, this could potentially provide answers to questions such as "Do younger individuals have better recovery from acoustic trauma versus older individuals", "Does noise-induced tinnitus sound different than drug-induced tinnitus", "How significant is the genetic component for developing tinnitus and which genes are most associated". Genome-wide association studies are done for so many diseases, why not tinnitus??

Also from an epidemiological perspective, I've noticed that on this message board individuals from Northern European countries are overrepresented versus Asian or Latin American Countries (or maybe they just post more since this is an English speaking board). But another question that I've wondered is, do certain countries have less or more incidence of tinnitus and could that be due to latitude (sun exposure, weather, etc), diet, etc.

Tagging @Hazel @markuu as these are some ideas for the next survey (if there is one)

 

I'm coming to better understanding of how my particular Tinnitus works. Recently I've been able to hear the _actual_ tinnitus sound. It's a very soft kind of morse code sound bb bb bbbeb bebbeb bebebb bbbe beb ebb. Half silence, half sounds. I can only hear this when I'm super relaxed or late at night once the general buzz in my brain is gone it feels and sounds exactly like a half broken wire not 100% connected or something not quite free in the ear and a bit.. stiff. This sound wasn't able to be heard a few weeks ago.. well it was.. But it was a constant tone other than a broken tone. Before I had a fully leaky connection.. now it's only half leaky (when super relaxed).. It seems like to me.. at some stage in the coming weeks if it continues to improve when ultra relaxed I will get complete silence with my ears plugged.

Most of the louder high pitch I hear which I called tinnitus.. is other sounds not getting into my brain properly... as if the nerves have much less bandwidth than before and too much input equals more leakage. So for example.. Road noise in the car especially doesn't get in my brain as road noise.. it turns into the high pitched sound., but when there's no sound in the environment I don't hear the high pitched tone.. If that makes sense. In the dead silence and when I'm very relaxed the only sound in my ear is this very very quiet morse code sound and that's so quiet I can only hear it with my ears plugged. It's not a bother at all.... But during the day pretty much any complex sound into the ear makes a high pitched tone. Another example is this.. I'll drive a short distance to the post office and my ear/brain will be ringing, quite loudly.. I stop the car.. there's silence, I walk into the post office where the radio is going.. I hear ringing.. I get back in the car.. silence... I drive the car ringing.. I stop the car at home.. Silence. If I go very far in the car there will be a period of time where the ringing will continue for an hour or two. I've also in the last week started developing occasional much louder fleeting tinnitus that feels like it shoots out of my brain and out of my right ear.. which is my good ear.. it lasts about 10 seconds then stops. That's not something I've have before since I got tinnitus or ever before in my life. It's only happened a few times and all have been in the last few days since the ringing has started being intermittent morse codeish in my best times.

For many years I've been complaining the road noise in the car has been hurting my ears and was TOO much for me. I feel like I've got hearing damage from that in that sound range. The other component to it I have is clearly to me all somatic.. I wake up with massive electrical noise all over my brain every morning, but it's directly related to neck pain and my jaw, the more crooked my neck is when I wake up.. the worse that is and it backs off as soon as my neck loosens up.. I never had this until the tinnitus started even when my neck was sore... I'm not so worried about that part of it because I feel like that will go away with time when I can strengthen and straighten my neck up and I feel like that is secondary to the initial hearing damage.

 

John is the "Visual snow" people talk about those little white.. sparkles that shoot around in your vision that you can see in your vision at times when outside in the sun. I sometimes see them, I have been able to ever since my earliest memories as a child, actually back then I could tune into seeing them pretty much anytime.. I figured I was just tuning into the neurons in my eye/brain firing around and that those were there for everyone but maybe not everyone was able to get into that zone.. we are talking age 4 - 10 as when I used to be able to see them any time. These days I can't see them in my regular life, only occasionally in the right conditions. But just wanted to know if those things are what people call visual snow?. I have enormous amount of floaters.. I've seen pictures of them on a scan I had at the optometrists those at least are real physical things.. . I don't want to think about the visual snow too much because at my age and with tinnitus I could probably get stuck in that state of mine if I went there..

 

Honestly one of the biggest mistakes people make about tinnitus is lumping together different subtypes.
What makes tinnitus so difficult to solve is its 'heterogeneity.' It may all fall in the same basket but tinnitus has vast variety as reflected anecdotally on this board.

If you get a chance, watch the video I linked above and if time permits, watch it twice because there so much information explaining the complexity of tinnitus, best to watch it a second time to further absorb this rather complex subject matter. The scope of tinnitus is considerable.

In particular because each of our brains are organized differently, tinnitus will likely not occupy precisely the same regions for any two people. The permutations are literally mind blowing forgive the pun.

I am a good example and of course when I watched the video I did so based upon my particular vantage point...consideration of my particular tinnitus subtype.

There is a large tinnitus subtype on this forum whereby sleep dramatically affects their tinnitus. Sleep is the overwhelming trigger for my tinnitus. Why would this be? One theory is...I dream vividly and can recollect many of my dreams if focused upon them as I wake which is many times accompanied by a raging hiss. My audiologist who may not be an expert in tinnitus, believes its elevated cortisol levels. My comment would be...cortisol is a possible contributor but I believe there is more to it and touched upon in the video.

If you listen to the professor in the video, he discusses different regions of the brain specific to brain 'frequency' which relates to dream versus awake brain wave activity which can even be affected by cross communication of these regions. This further explains why myself and many others who change brain waves and frequency...why this dramatically influences our tinnitus...because their (my) tinnitus lives or is amplified by these regions of the brain being active in the dream state and more dormant in the awake state as I type this where brain activity is much different.

If you watch the video with an eye toward brain frequency and region and brain wave activity as the professor explains....how people can have very different areas of the brain affecting their tinnitus due to the organization of an individual's brain, I believe it becomes more clear just how complex tinnitus is and why all subtypes can't be lumped together. Tinnitus is a brain disorder and our brains many times are organized very differently which can be applied crudely to a particular subtype. Truth is, subtypes are likely multivariant as well.
Many like me here can take a 30 minute nap or fall into a deep sleep with related brain wave change which can send their tinnitus to obtrusive sound level as they wake. This happens all the time with me. Pretty clear, my tinnitus is a function of brain wave activity and regions of the brain affected by this change in frequency as I sleep which are more dormant when awake as my tinnitus is generally lower when awake for a period of time.

The following link addresses the various brain wave tiers relative to frequency which relate to location within the brain.

https://blog.mindvalley.com/brain-waves/

Another conversation relates to mental health and tinnitus and I believe there is a high correlation between anxiety, depression, OCD and other mental health deficits which affect neuron transmission and predisposition to 'remember' tinnitus long term. This may loosely correlate with brain organization...common among those prone to say OCD that Lane spoke of which may relate to 'chemistry' of the brain and organization and even hemisphere dominance.

In summary there are an incalculable number of subtypes of varying degrees.

I believe it will be a long spiral staircase of learning to better define tinnitus subtypes well into the future.

If the tinnitus signal can be 'confounded' by bi-modal stimulation breaking up the synchronicity of hyperactive fusiform cells localized in the brain stem...which is the conduit of communication with the auditory cortex creating tinnitus...independent of different regions of the brain firing based upon brain frequency, then we win. My hope for all.

 

Hi John,

So far I've gotten to about 20 minutes into the presentation. To be honest, I'm not finding an awful lot to work with. The part on thamaocortical synchrony was fairly interesting until I found out that it was only a theoretical consideration. But the main push to use QEEG as a clinical adjunct is, frankly, not terribly well supported. Is there something specific in this that you wanted my opinion on? Or maybe I should just be patient and wait for the goods in the second half?