Reverse the Sine Wave — Cure Tinnitus?

[The Torrent]

I was just sitting here thinking. You know how active noise cancelling works? It gets the sound, reverses the sine wave and transmits it to cancel out the noise. Is this possible with tinnitus? Has anyone tried? If you find out the exact frequency of your tinnitus, I'm not entirely sure how but there will be a way can you can reverse the wave and play it to cancel out the tinnitus?

Just throwing an idea out there.

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this or anything, I'm new to here and not entirely sure.

Many thanks

 

[JurgenG]

If you could only do that in the brain.
Since it's not an actual soundwave you course can't "kill" it like a normal wave, with cancellation technology like in headphones.
Since we are talking about some far-fetched theories, I think some form of calibration might be the solution.
Like if we could connect our brains to a computer, while listening to pure tones, and the computer giving the signal we should hear, and delete all noise in the process.

 

[Aaron44126]

You know how active noise cancelling works?

It works by applying the inverse wave to effectively neutralize the sound wave traveling through the air, before it even hits your ears. Tinnitus isn't a real sound (in the sense of a sound wave traveling through the air) so it can't be cancelled out in this manner.

 

[SusanButcher]

I was testing the frequency of my tinnitus using a frequency generator, and at a sound level in the phones close to subjective loudness of the tinnitus, there were beats on either side as I swept the generator across the 1.6kHz T frequency. Very odd. It's not a real sound, but it does act like one in some ways.

 

[SusanButcher]

I should add that my tinnitus can be stopped for a couple of minutes by listening to a few short bleeps of 1.6khz sine wave at a low to moderate volume. That's not phase cancellation as such. My guess is, once I give my ear and brain what it's trying to hear, it stops hallucinating it. It's not a long term solution, but it does give a window of silence when I want it. I'm not sure if it would work for other people; my tinnitus is mild, and it's usually only a problem at night.

 

[GregCA]

I should add that my tinnitus can be stopped for a couple of minutes by listening to a few short bleeps of 1.6khz sine wave at a low to moderate volume. That's not phase cancellation as such. My guess is, once I give my ear and brain what it's trying to hear, it stops hallucinating it. It's not a long term solution, but it does give a window of silence when I want it. I'm not sure if it would work for other people; my tinnitus is mild, and it's usually only a problem at night.

It's called residual inhibition. Amplitude modulated sounds are supposedly pretty good at inducing it.

 

[SusanButcher]

Thanks Greg, it's useful to have a name for the effect.