The AudioNotch Tinnitus Treatment Blog

Is there such a thing as Sound Therapy Music for tinnitus? The term can be used interchangeably with “Notched Music,” “Notched Music Therapy,” and other terms. Originally discovered by Christo Pantev’s German lab, other experiments have shown efficacy with Notching other sounds as well, such as white noise.

To read about the science behind Sound Therapy Music, click here.

To summarize: Sound Therapy Music takes a regular song, and then “notches out” the sound energy at and around the patient’s tinnitus frequency. Then, patients listen to the music and healthy and unhealthy auditory cells are differentially stimulated. The healthy … Continue Reading

“Composing the Tinnitus Suites: 2014,” or “Tinnitus 2014,” for short, is an art installation by Daniel Fishkin. I learned about this art installation when I stumbled upon this blog post:
Daniel Fishkin, a Brooklyn-based sound artist, seeks a creative solution to tinnitus in lieu of a medical one. Tinnitus, a condition in which one perceives a continuous high-pitched ringing sound, has affected Fishkin since 2008. Physicians are unable to offer any effective treatment beyond “getting used to it,” yet this solution treats the problem far too lightly. Fishkin explores this condition, and notions of loss and gain, through his musical sculpture … Continue Reading

TMS, as it is colloquially referred to (or Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, which is the proper term) has recently been investigated as a possible treatment avenue for tinnitus. A lot patients get excited about TMS & tinnitus, but the results have not been good. People are attracted to TMS because it’s noninvasive (basically just a magnet held over your head) and thus doesn’t really appear to have any significant complications with use. It’s been used in depression as well, and the logic is that you could target the affected region of the brain non-invasively. … Continue Reading

What are the tinnitus treatment options that are promising right now? It’s difficult to assess research findings before extensive clinical trials have come out, but I can point towards some areas of research in tinnitus treatment that are promising in 2014: I’ve blogged about them before:

• New U of M Study Offers Promise in Developing Therapy for Tinnitus
• More on the Michigan Research
• Promising Early Results for Vagal Nerve Therapy for Tinnitus

In 2014, these are the tinnitus treatment options to look out for. As with any type of … Continue Reading

Tinnitus Research 2014: what are some interesting new papers that have come out? When I’m writing the blog, I usually search the term “tinnitus” on google scholar and look for interesting papers that might be useful for our readers. Tinnitus is actually a very interesting research problem because it’s that nexus of a lot of work in neuroscience: the “bottom-up” approach of cellular neuroscience and the “top-down” approach of fMRI imaging, which visualizes blood flow to various large regions of the brain. People with tinnitus are constantly searching for promising new treatment avenues. I like to link to scientific papers … Continue Reading

Lots of patients in the New York area search for tinnitus treatment available at NYU. The NYU Langone Medical Center has a series of helpful articles for people searching for “tinnitus treatment NYU” that I’ll offer some brief recaps below for:

NYU’s medical center on homeopathic treatments for tinnitus:
A 12-week, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial with 21 participants tested the effectiveness of a homeopathic remedy containing Sodium salicylate, Ascaridole (Chenopodium), Conine (Conium), and Quinine as a treatment for tinnitus.  The results were negative in all measures of the condition.
NYU on rTMS as a treatment for tinnitus:

A preliminary study found indications that rTMS may … Continue Reading

Lots of people look for good academic resources on tinnitus. What’s the leading tinnitus journal out there today? From what I can garner, there aren’t many tinnitus specific journals. The majority of tinnitus research is essentially a subfield of neuroscience research at either the cellular or brain-imaging based level, so I think the bulk of tinnitus research appears in medical journals and neuroscience journals.

I have been able to find a dedicated tinnitus journal, however, and that’s the International Tinnitus Journal. Some details from their wikipedia page:
The International Tinnitus Journal is a peer-reviewedmedical journal that was established … Continue Reading

AudioNotch is happy to announce that our tinnitus masker is now available on mobile! We’ve successfully re-engineered it to work on all web browser platforms. A tinnitus masker is a useful tool for those of you who are looking for an auditory sleep aid or some type of ambient background music. Many of you find it easier to concentrate with the aid of masking sounds in the background. As an added bonus, these natural masking sounds can be converted into Notched Natural Sound Therapy.  The concept of a tinnitus masker was discovered incidentally. A patient … Continue Reading

Gizmodo has written an introductory post on tinnitus. Check it out here:

Some perceive it as a high-pitched, mosquito-like squeal; others, an incessant electrical buzzing. It can even sound like unintelligible voices or music. It’s known as tinnitus, and it’s a surprisingly common affliction, affecting some 50 million people in America alone. Here’s why it happens, and how you can prevent it.

Tinnitus (Latin for “ringing”) is a condition characterized by a perceived ringing, swishing, hissing, humming, roaring, beeping, sizzling, steady tones or tunes coming from one or both ears or from inside the head. … Continue Reading

I found the following story, but couldn’t get a good source on the anecdote:

Teacher has musical hallucinations

A maths teacher who persistently hears music playing in her head has teamed up with scientists to learn more about the condition.

Sylvia, 69, has suffered from the rare condition of musical hallucinations for the past decade after she started to go deaf about 20 years ago. At first she developed severe tinnitus but this led to what has been called “the iPod in her head” and due to her musical knowledge she was … Continue Reading