The AudioNotch Tinnitus Treatment Blog

Please note: the following information does not constitute professional medical advice, and is provided for general informational purposes only. Please speak to your doctor if you have tinnitus.

For the average person with tinnitus, making sense of the scientific literature on treatments is a difficult task. Without having a background in statistics or the critical appraisal of scientific papers, it’s easy to be persuaded by the efficacy of a multitude of treatments. Navigating this space is made even more difficult by the fact that the internet is flooded with misinformation and marketing copy on treatments that are demonstrably useless.

The tinnitus sound therapy … Continue Reading

An interesting paper, also out of the original German research group headed by Dr. Christo Pantev, experimented with an interesting question: could the efficacy of Notched Music Therapy be increased by combining it with the direct application of transcranial current? Unfortunately, the study did not find that adding a component of transcranial current to the auditory therapy increased its efficacy.

A similar model of combining specific auditory stimulation with direct brain stimulation is being trialed with Vagal Nerve Therapy, which involves implanting a transponder onto the vagal nerve, and is obviously much more invasive.

The link … Continue Reading

Another small study from the original German group that discovered Notched Sound Therapy has validated its efficacy. The sample size was small, but they did replicate the previous therapeutic treatment effects. It was similar in design to previous studies, but it’s still heartening to see that the efficacy was successfully replicated in another set of test subjects. A link to the paper is here, and I posted the abstract below:
Background. The generation and maintenance of tinnitus are assumed to be based on maladaptive functional cortical reorganization. Listening to modified music, which contains no energy in the range … Continue Reading

Tailor Made Notched Sound Therapy is created by “Notching Out” sound energy at and around a user’s tinnitus frequency. Here’s an infographic below which explains how it works:

An overview of how to “Notch Out” audio from unprocessed audio

We understsand, however, that users want an unbiased view of how this therapy actually works and what the efficacy is.

Check out this Tinnitus Talk forum thread where Notched Sound Therapy is discussed. We’ve posted on the thread but … Continue Reading

At AudioNotch, we like to emphasize that we’re based on scientific research. The majority of treatments marketed on-line for tinnitus are not actually scientifically supported, so it’s important for us to differentiate ourselves from treatments that have no scientific basis.

That said, “based on science” isn’t the same this as “100% proven.” The studies done on Notched Sound Therapy have been evaluated in promising terms, but they had limitations. That’s why larger studies are needed. The good news is that one such larger study (a randomized controlled trial) is now underway. It has been initiated by the discoverers of Notched Music Therapy:
A … Continue Reading

Tailor-Made Notched Sound Therapy is an umbrella term that subsumes two types of Notched Sound Therapy:

• Notched Music Therapy (also referred to as Tailor-Made Notched Sound Therapy by the researchers who discovered it)
• Notched White Noise Therapy (also referred to as Windowed Sound Therapy by the researchers who discovered it)

Proposed mechanism of Notched Music Therapy:

From this source:

The observed reductions in tinnitus loudness, annoyance and handicapping as well as the reductions in evoked neural activity appear cumulative, indicating a long-term neuroplastic effect. There is evidence in humans that tinnitus is associated with a relative … Continue Reading

While long term follow up studies have not yet been done on individuals whose tinnitus volume decreased after a completed treatment with Notched Music, the researchers who developed it have written the following:

From a long term study on Notched Music Therapy conducted over several month’s duration:

The observed reductions in tinnitus loudness, annoyance and handicapping as well as the reductions in evoked neural activity appear cumulative, indicating a long-term neuroplastic effect. There is evidence in humans that tinnitus is associated with a relative excitatory-inhibitory cortical neural network dysbalance, at the expense of the inhibitory system.

This loss of … Continue Reading

The New York Times wrote a brief article on Notched Music Therapy when some of the earlier research was published several years ago. Click here to check it out! In fact, there’s a great explanatory paragraph on the mechanism underlying the therapy:
The researchers suggest that two things might be happening in the auditory cortex to bring about the improvement. The neurons in the cortex related to the ringing frequency are presumably not being stimulated, because those frequencies are absent from the music. At the same time, nearby neurons may have been actively suppressing the tinnitus-related neurons, … Continue Reading