The AudioNotch Tinnitus Treatment Blog

For centuries, the medical community was under the assumption that once the brain matured, the number of neurons and pathways between these delicate connections were permanent. However, beginning in the 1950s, the theory of neuroplasticity emerged. This theory suggested that among the approximately 100 billion nerve cells that comprise the brain tissue known as grey matter, new communication pathways are constantly evolving and changing. Researchers would later discover that this development was especially important in the event of disease processes, illness or injury.

Maladaptive Plasticity

Eventually, scientists learned that plasticity occurs anywhere in the brain. Different types of plasticity take place as needed. The process generally serves to manage new information gained through learning. The brain might also undergo maladaptive plasticity after the body sustains an injury. In the case of limb loss, patients commonly experience a phenomenon known as phantom limb pain. Physicians discovered that this strange event is caused by maladaptive plasticity in almost 80 percent of patients.

Without the nerve cells that once completed the limb circuit, the brain must restructure and design a new map to accommodate for the missing information. Scientists once thought that phantom pain was the brain’s way of filling in the gap. However, Oxford University researchers found that when performing MRI scans on affected amputees, the brain had in fact developed such stable pathways, that neurons had the ability to remember sensations experienced by the missing limb. Overcoming these pathways requires retraining the neurons through any number of exercises and coercing the cells to make new communication routes.

Tinnitus

In the last few years, researchers have also learned that the condition known as tinnitus, or ringing in the ears, is thought to have origins in maladaptive plasticity in many instances. The condition is somewhat of a phantom pain that may develop as a result of a learning process that takes place in the auditory cortex of the brain when someone suffers some degree of hearing loss. The loss might occur because of the natural aging process, an injury or a circulatory disorder.

Studies suggest that approximately 20 percent of the population suffers from the condition that ranges from occasional to continual. The sound may be that of actual ringing, a rushing, roaring, hissing or buzzing. If the problem develops as part of a learned process, researchers suggest that the brain may also be trained to unlearn the pathway. Using various techniques that might include vagal nerve stimulation, the auditory cortex is disabled and new pathways are formed.