Tinnitus Mapped Inside Human Brain

Full article below:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-32414876

 

Good find. Here's a link to the paper, since the link on the BBC article isn't currently working

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(15)00278-X

 

How can these other `parts of the brain` create a phantom sound? Anyone understands this part?

 

Unfortunately there is not much to understand... the human central nervous system / brain may be the most complex system in the frigging universe. It is highly unlikely that we will be able to decipher it, not even with quantum computing in a 1000 years. I was hoping that with high precision tonotopic mapping scientists would eventually be able to localize the T in one specific location in the autitory cortex. If that would be possible then deep brain stimulation or HIFU could be the cure (cutting that piece of s**t responsible for T out of the brain). Doesn't really sound feasible to me though if the neural hyperactivity is scattered all over the place.

 

Yes that is what I don`t really understand ... the fact that the neural activity responsible for T is even outside the auditory cortex ... man this thing is like some ancient 1000 headed monster ... you cut one head of, up pops another ... cut two heads off, it bites you in the ass with the others ... I was looking forward to HIFU but reading this i`m also loosing a bit of my overly excited hope. Sometimes all this new info, however interesting it seems, it just removes the light at the end of the tunnel ..

 

The only fail-safe option, I figure, would be to remove all neurons from the brain.

Another way to look at it is this: Instead of asking ourselves what goes on in the brain, we could focus on all things that has a chance to affect brain activity, then try them out one by one and se what happends.

 

Yes but not only one part of the brain is active at a time whatever you do. The source might still be in one part but then you have all other parts that might be active as a secondary action or response to that. The sound of T. isn't all that's happening. It is being processed by your mind all the time. F.i. if you stop to think how loud your T. is. You will also start accesing memories as referance points. Wich are bound to activate some part of the brain that hasen't anything to do with T. itself.

I was just giving an example. There are lots of things that can happen inside a human brain. Another might be feelings that T. provokes. It might be fear, fight or flight response and so on. When this guys T is loud it might bother him more wich sets of responses in other parts of the brain that are otherwise not present when his T is more silent.

I haven't had the chance to read the article so I'm just tossing thoughts out there. But what I'm trying to say is don't throw the towel in yet. There is a long way to go before we can draw qualitative conclusions about T.

 

That's pretty amazing...Research for tinnitus is ever going and soon a cure will be obtainable.

 

My exact thoughts.

 

...meditation, exercise, music, psychotropic substances...

 

Those would offer a few starting points, yes. I'm stucked with this T-tournment, and since I won't go for suicide my two options are to suffer patheticly, or to suffer patheticly and try to do something about it and probably fail, just as patheticly.

Both options sucks, obviously, but it will probably be easier to motivate myself if I go for the last one.

 

Here's another article on the same research but a little bit more in depth and some interesting quotes from the researchers

http://www.newscientist.com/article...-reveals-multiple-regions-cause-tinnitus.html

 

How do they (HIFU clinic) answer to that?

 

nills, don't throw the towel just yet. I consider going to the clinic as well!

'Brain Rhythm (SoniModul)
There is accumulating evidence that the brain functions as an oscillating coherent generator. The most important partners are the cortical areas and the thalamus. There are numerous (many billions) recurrent connections (or loops) from thalamus to cortex and back as well as between cortical areas. This complex organization may be compared to an orchestra, with the thalamus in the middle as conductor and the cortical areas distributed around as the players. Every sector of this orchestra, sensory, motor and mental (cognitive/emotional), has a dual organization, with tightly organized executing and diffusely organized modulating components. This thalamocortical system, or network, possesses the neuronal anatomo-physiological organization to function as a coherent oscillator.'

Also keep in mind the patient concerned has intractable epilepsy. Thus I wonder what of the neural hyperactivity measured was T related and what epilepsy? Personally, I think they got both. Therefore the data is inconclusive for just T.

 

So, in a patient with epilepsy and tinnitus there is electrical activity over wide areas of his brain. Interesting but is this good or bad news? Maybe the patient should be on retigabine? If there was one specific area responsible for tinnitus is that is easier to target and cure?

All the new research is just more research and no doubt more funding. It has been going on for years. I just wonder how long we are all going to have to put up with our misery before there is a real breakthrough?

 

This link is worked fine for me.

 

"First they played him 30 seconds of white noise, which suppressed his tinnitus for about 10 seconds before it gradually returned. Bob was asked to rate the loudness of his tinnitus before the experiment started, as well as immediately after the white noise finished and 10 seconds later. This protocol was then repeated many times over two days."​

This is what was in the New Scientist article. Therefore is this how the white noise generators work? Perhaps @Dr. Nagler may like to comment on this. All I know is that people who have used these white noise generators have said that it has reduced their conscious hearing of the noise from a 10 for example to a 2 or a 3............

"For example, Bob's tinnitus was associated with more activity than normal in the primary auditory cortex – an area of the brain involved in the initial processing of sound – but also in other brain areas involved in the wider perception of noises, such as those that control attention, memory and emotion."​

Again from the New Scientist article. So is this why when busy and not stressed the sound seems to go down or is not so noticeable?

"It's like when you're walking home on a dark night and you can hear every little flicker of sound that would normally go unnoticed," says Sedley. "Maybe in people with tinnitus, this 'high alert' activity somehow kicks in, gains access to wider perception networks in the brain, and is difficult to dislodge."​

So when stressed this caused the T to lodge in brain as one is on high alert?

 

I didn't read the article, but from the excerpt you quoted I think they are describing some sort of residual inhibition. It really has nothing to do with converting 9s and 10s into 2s and 3s.

 

Thank you for replying.
Obviously I dont understand this too well.
I wonder if I can ask you to please read the article (s). They are not long and if a dumb layperson like me can understand them then I am sure that for you it will be a 2 minute read for the New Scientist article and a 1 minute read of the BBC article (which you dont need to read as the NS is sufficient).

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(15)00278-X

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-32414876

The article says that white noise was played to the man and that his T went down (ie residual inhibition). I saw a correlation between the white noise from the ear generators and the white noise played to the man. Isn't it achieving the same thing? Or is this the same as playing notched music? It is just cause they used white noise to suppress it.
Otherwise can you please explain how it is converting the 9 and 10 to the 2 and 3 in your instance of TRT white noise generators. Just so confused and could really do with an explanation of how the white noise generators work.......as so many have said they do work well.......there was even a poll done on TT and many said that the WGN's had been very successful. Plus I have received personal testimony from another person who has said that the WNG that he has used has been fantastic and brought him back to normal life and he notices his T only 5% of the time now - this is from a state of suicidal desperation but determination to get better so he turned to the WNG with TRT and is doing really well now. I am just hoping that you wont mind be banging on about this and please if you could explain to me how the WNG work to create a 2 or 3 from a 10? Other people have asked me the same question - how does it work and I have had to answer that I have no idea.
Hoping you can explain?
thanking you in advance............

 

Well I would actually not be so optimistic as this report shows that the whole brain of tinnitus sufferers is a mess meaning that it will be more difficult to target the problem and find a possible cure !
In some way I am not surprised of these findings cause I always felt that tinnitus (and audition in general) has a strong link with stress, emotions and anxiety thus involving a lot of different brain areas...
I see only habituation as an option for the next decades... And prevention of noise trauma and stress as a priority to avoid future victims of this s... !
Hope I'm wrong though !
Love to all of you suffering in noise !

 

Well, they already identified the issue has hyperactive neurons...Trobalt works, so there will be treatments out. Maybe not a cure, but a meaningful reduction.

 

OK. I read the articles. So in a nutshell one group used residual inhibition to study the brain when tinnitus was "on" and when tinnitus was "off." And what they found was that when tinnitus is "on," that there was a lot of activity within the brain in areas that were unrelated to the auditory cortex. Another study looked at tinnitus in an individual with a seizure disorder who was undergoing deep brain stimulation because of his seizure disorder. This study, too, demonstrated that non-auditory areas of the brain play a significant role in tinnitus.

Now let me ask you a question. (Fair is fair, after all!) A lot of tinnitus research is being conducted. We all already knew that. Tinnitus involves the non-auditory brain as well as the auditory brain. We all already knew that as well. And when a truly watershed moment occurs and a cure emerges, everybody will know that also. So for you, as a tinnitus sufferer of today, what real impact do these articles you have asked me to read have upon your life as you are currently living it?

 

I think that people might get discouraged by the idea that there might be a lot more complexity to the T. problem then they might have thought. They might think that we're not as close to a cure as they h

But to me it would only seem natural that an increased activity in one part of the brain might lead to an increased activity in other parts. These findings don't have to mean that T. will be more or less hard to find a cure for. We know it's hard since we don't have one so the more information we have and the more we learn the better it is.

I think that many might have had the idea that the only factor in T. was the auditory cortex and that we only had to find a way to treat that or the inner ear. That's just one or two components and hence the complexity is smaller then having to treat the whole brain.

It might be so that we have to treat other parts then the inner ear or the auditory cortex but I think that it's not impossible that the other parts are just active as a secondary response and that the source still might be a single component and that if we treat that then those other parts will decrease their activity as well. Also the activity of those other parts might not have anything to do with the maintenence of the sound. It still might be that if we decrease the activity in the auditory cortex the sound of the T. will stop even though those other parts remain active but I find that unliklely.

 

'So for you, as a tinnitus sufferer of today, what real impact do these articles you have asked me to read have upon your life as you are currently living it?'

Good question
Answer: No effect, nothing, zippo, zilch.....

Nothing changes, get on with life and know that research goes on as it has done for years. And a cure isn't exactly around the corner.

 

I like your view a lot!

But actually it does have an impact, a negative one. Because every moment devoted to thinking about articles like that ... is a moment unnecessarily devoted to thinking about tinnitus. And you necessarily think about it enough as is!

 

What about for people like myself who are largely habituated but because of my tinnitus, find articles like this fascinating and personally empowering?

 

Yes! It's the auditory cortex, or part of the Thalamus. Either way, destroy the auditory cortex and T will cease to exist. Certainly you may lose some hearing in the process. But who cares?

Those articles are all blah, blah, blah and mere concepts. Until they actually do ablate/slash some brain. We all will have to wait for @Viking 's post op report. And I pray that it's a cure. We need some hard evidence here and hope.

Nonethless, from what they did in the '90s the brain slashing did work! Albeit, a 50-50 chance of a cure/reduction. But hey, you can do such an op more than once.. so.

 

None positive really, true. On the other hand, if you expand that question, what impact does visiting this entire forum have upon our lifes? What is its purpose? support and knowledge about the condition I guess. The latter aplies to this specific threat.

 

You shouldn't say what it is and is not becouse if you are able to do that then all hail to you becouse then you know more about T. then anyone else does. However I doubt that.

These articles should be taken for what they are: increased insight in how T. works. No more, no less.

 

i agree completely. basically a correlation vs causation issue. Dr. Deborah Hall has been on the leading front of this issue: here is a good recent paper by her that addresses the confounds in many of the papers regarding fMRI studies:
http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/14992027.2013.846482