The AudioNotch Tinnitus Treatment Blog

Note: this article was written by Max, one of our partners at HitTail

Tinnitus is a symptom of mal-adaptive changes in your brain following hearing loss. It’s a disorder where the brain registers non-existent sound. Tinnitus has stages that can range from minor nuisance right to a debilitating reaction that can lead to loss of hearing. It can interfere with having normal conversation, listening to music and even enjoying silence.

Tinnitus is usually treated by a neuromuscular dentist. Most sufferers are told – and manage – to live with this disorder, as most forms are untreatable. Some cases are actually the result of pressure on the ear created by the temporomandibular joint. As the bones in our ear resemble modified jawbones, many tinnitus cases can be treated in the same manner as a jaw.

While the medical research community has not come up with a way to cure tinnitus, a group of NIH-funded researchers believe they may be close to a solution that will at least help sufferers function better with the condition. Vagus nerve stimulation tinnitus could be a treatment that trains the body to ignore tinnitus. Initial tests have showed promising clinical trials.

In principle, on a regular basis, the brain filters stimuli, dismissing information that it considers unimportant. It is believed that circumventing tinnitus could simply be a matter of utilizing the brain’s inherent filtering capabilities to disregard tinnitus sounds.

The process involves the vagus nerve, a nerve in the neck. Found traveling from the brain to the torso, it plays a critical role in learning and adaptation. Whenever that nerve is stimulated, it prompts the brain to release norepinephrine. That’s a neurotransmitter. Norepinephrine consolidates and organizes memories in the region of the brain known as the amygdala.

To initiate vagus nerve stimulation tinnitus, test subjects are played a series of tones while stimulating the vagus nerve. Researchers are hoping that through this process, the body will adapt, learning to cull through the different resonances and dispense with the tinnitus sound.

The first round of tests have proved promising, performed with rats and then with a small group of people. Researchers recorded that a large number of the subjects showed a significant diminishment in volume in relation to their tinnitus. Excited about the possibilities, researchers are expanding the trials. If results continue to be impressive, they will use vagus nerve stimulation tinnitus to treat the disorder’s millions of sufferers.

Vagus nerve stimulation tinnitus is currently being used to treat about 50,000 patients that suffer from depression or epilepsy.