I'm currently doing some research on the connection between tinnitus and the limbic system, and this thread was the only one on this forum with limbic in the title. I was pretty floored when I began reading the artice at the
FIRST LINK. I'll paste below 3 short snippets from the beginning of that fairly long article.
It's appearing to me that any significant improvement from very entrenched cases of severe tinnitus/hyperacusis is probably going to have to address the limbic system in the brain to some degree or another. Whether that's by various kinds of relaxation techniques, meditation, energetic practices, neural retraining, etc.
Subjective tinnitus, or "ringing in the ears," is perceived by 10 to 15 percent of the adult population and causes significant suffering in a subset of patients. While it was originally thought of as a purely auditory phenomenon, there is increasing evidence that
the limbic system influences whether and how tinnitus is perceived, far beyond merely determining the patient's emotional reaction to the phantom sound. Based on functional imaging and electrophysiological data,
recent articles frame tinnitus as a "network problem" arising from abnormalities in auditory-limbic interactions.
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1. Introduction
Subjective tinnitus, an auditory phantom percept often described as "ringing in the ears," affects about 10 to 15% of the adult population [
1] and significantly impairs quality of life in a subset of those affected by it. While being often perceived "in the ears" and linked to hearing loss in the vast majority of cases,
chronic subjective tinnitus appears to be a problem of the central nervous system rather than the ear, since it can persist or even start when the auditory nerve is cut [
2]. Numerous studies in human tinnitus patients as well as animal models of tinnitus have
provided evidence for structural and functional changes at multiple locations of the central auditory system, and it is widely assumed that central auditory system plasticity is at the root of the aberrant neural activity that gives rise to the perception of tinnitus [
3].
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... tinnitus patients often report that tinnitus is exacerbated or even triggered by stress [
5,
6], which suggests influences of the limbic system. Indeed,
there is mounting evidence that limbic system involvement in tinnitus goes beyond merely determining the emotional response to a chronic and sometimes debilitating condition but may instead modulate whether and to what extent aberrant auditory system activity results in a conscious tinnitus percept [
7–
12].
to a remarkable story of a woman who recovered from some intractible health conditions (many of which I have) by following a limbic retraining program -- Here's
to a description of that program (DNRS). -- Clicking on the link below (picture) will take you to Annie Hopper's website, the woman who developed the program
