White Noise Therapy Could Help Prevent Tinnitus

Can Immediate White Noise Therapy After Exposure to Damaging Loud Noise Prevent Tinnitus?

Excerpt from the article:

Research has shown that exposure to white noise – noise containing many frequencies, such as the roar of a crowd or the hum of an air conditioner – can freeze brain plasticity in young children and animals whose brains are still developing.

White noise could "also freeze the abnormal plasticity that occurs after hearing loss and may lead to tinnitus,” (Karl) Kandler (director of the Auditory Research Group at the University of Pittsburgh) said.

He and his team found that mice that received white noise therapy immediately after being exposed to loud noises that would normally cause tinnitus did not develop symptoms.

“We think the reason why it works in our mouse model is because we started right afterwards,” said Kandler. “Now we’re trying to figure out how long after the damaging sound exposure can we start the white noise therapy to prevent it.”

Four weeks after the noise trauma event is likely too late, he said, which is why most human tinnitus patients don’t benefit from sound therapy.

He said one way to prevent the development of tinnitus after noise trauma is to expose oneself to moderate noise, white or otherwise.

(More info at article link above, including a link to Kandler's study.

 

Damn it ! We should have thought of it earlier ! Oups, in fact it is just another trial on mice (what about humans ?). But anyway thanks for the information.

 

If it's acoustic trauma that causes the neurons to reorganize in a way that causes tinnitus, then may be by applying a little acoustic trauma you could put the neurons in a state where they're malleable and could be normalized by the right stimuli such as the white noise mentioned in the art. The noise wouldn't be too dangerous as there are people like me who have tinnitus but hear "perfectly" and apparently got the tinnitus from noise exposure. I don't if anyone is researching it, but I think it's worth looking into among other things.

 

It is actually weird, because, and this sounds totally counterintuitive. The one moment of pure silence I had in the last two years came after I spend a day in London being bombarded with all kinds of sounds, the tube, you name it. Basically the loudest day I had in a while. I go to the apartment I am staying at after this day and it's It's very quit there. An hour after I arrived the tinnitus stops completely for like 45 mins before it came back. It was VERY weird!

 

So all sound therapies (TRT) are a waste of money and time?
This is what already was my experience..

 

In the article, Kandler also says, "You should not keep your ear quiet; you should not go to a quiet environment."

I think the implications of this study suggest that we should be cautious about overprotection. There is obviously a need to protect against very loud sounds, sounds that everyone should avoid regardless of hearing damage.

I'm very interested in brain plasticity. So often we are told to wait a year to do TRT or try a hearing aid because the tinnitus or our hearing might improve. Yet after the initial damage, there is a small window for brain plasticity.

 

Not all white noise is created equal. In this case, a small difference in the sound makes a huge difference in the outcome of how the brains of rodents reorganize. Kandler was referring to a recently published study (that I will mention in a new thread) in which young rodents who had previously been exposed to damaging noise where then "rescued" with PULSED white noise. When the stimulus is pulsed (gated on and off very rapidly) it can sharpen 'inhibitory tone' in the young rodent brain. And, as we have heard many times here, increasing inhibition is generally the direction you want to go for tinnitus reduction.

This is kind of relevant-
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2002 Feb 19;99(4):2309-14. Epub 2002 Feb 12.
Disruption of primary auditory cortex by synchronous auditory inputs during a critical period.
Zhang LI1, Bao S, Merzenich MM.

Continuous white noise (sound machines, air conditioners and the like) has just the opposite effects. It lowers the the inhibitory tone in the cortex, and disorganizes the brain's internal frequency maps of the cochlea. This is not the direction you want to go for a tinnitus therapy.

Environmental noise retards auditory cortical development.
Chang EF, Merzenich MM.
Science. 2003 Apr 18;300(5618):498-502.

Environmental noise exposure degrades normal listening processes.
Zhou X, Merzenich MM.
Nat Commun. 2012 May 15;3:843. doi: 10.1038/ncomms1849.

Long-term, partially-reversible reorganization of frequency tuning in mature cat primary auditory cortex can be induced by passive exposure to moderate-level sounds.
Pienkowski M, Eggermont JJ.
Hear Res. 2009 Nov;257(1-2):24-40.

Kandler should have spoken more carefully because it is really all about timing. But in the end I completely agree with the the last posts - passive listening to any sound isn't going to do a whole lot for adults with chronic, subjective tinnitus. Kandler's studies are performed in younger animals who had experienced trauma only a short period before the "therapy" so the model is not hugely relevant. I suspect better therapies lie elsewhere