Hi
@Ela Stefan - essentially, he is talking about neuroplasticity. The theory is that any chronic conditions come from maladaptive changes to the brain as a result of some form of injury or other event. Instead of responding to the initial event and then returning to a state of rest or balance (or homeostasis), the event leaves an "imprint" on the brain: the brain becomes aroused when dealing with the issue or "danger" and does not return to its base level once the immediate issue has been resolved. Instead, it remains in a heightened state of vigilance (a bit like a worried person always looking our for danger), and reacts at the slightest sign that there is, or may be, something wrong.
To me, it's a bit like anxiety - you worry about something that may or may not happen; you overestimate the risk. With tinnitus, this is linked to the limbic system. Something happens and your body reacts by sounding an alarm, alerting you to the danger. But, in this case, you cannot really do anything to stop the ringing. But instead of knowing that there is no danger, you continually look for the issue and your body stays in this state of hypervigilance.
This is a bit like the Jastreboff model of tinnitus, which states that once you can stop worrying about the sound, you will eventually calm down and stop thinking about it - i.e. habituation. In theory, if we felt that nothing was wrong with us when hearing these noises, we would not focus on the noise and it would bother us less and less. However, some people with tinnitus have injured their inner or middle ear, so it is not like a problem that just goes away - the symptom of tinnitus is telling us that we have an injury, just like pain will tell us that we have a broken leg. But why does tinnitus happen with some people but not with others who have these ear injuries? And why do some people get tinnitus but manage not to worry so much or get into this state of anxiety and hypervigilance?
With these pain issues and other symptoms, neuroplasticity is used to get people to focus on other things, to change behaviours and to react differently to the symptoms. By doing this, they supposedly retrain their brains to respond differently to the problem. I know that with pain, doctors have found that parts of the brain that register pain also perform other tasks. So by focusing on these other areas, the idea is that those parts of the brain start working more on other tasks and less on making us aware of the pain. The result can be that the part of the brain changes (neuroplasticity) to not really focus on pain anymore - and the symptoms of pain then diminish.
I asked myself if this could be applied to tinnitus - do parts of the brain that are involved in processing sound also do other sensory tasks and can we, by focusing on them, reduce the response of the brain to sound? Obviously, this is a little tricky for tinnitus, as it is not hearing outside sounds that we want to reduce, but internal sounds only.
In addition, these techniques do not work for everyone. It is very interesting and people on here have spoken, in their success stories, about keeping busy, getting on with life and spending less and less time thinking about the noise. I am sure that this can help people - indeed, I know that when I am focused on something it is hard for me to register the tinnitus at the same time - it falls into the background. But can everyone do this? What about those whose tinnitus is very loud? And even if they can do other things and forget about it some of the time, can consistent practice of distracting activity and thinking ultimately result in them no longer hearing their tinnitus?
Probably another thread. But at a high level, yes, we need to do something about changing the signal (or, as the video indicates, changing the brain's way of reacting to it). And it looks like this is how this treatment works on nerve signals.
