Heres a paper on totnotopic reoganization and tinnitus for any one who is interested, i particularly think the perception of tinnitus can be greatly reduced if not eliminated by inducing neural plasticity, this cannot be a fast process though, but it would mean concentrating on sounds that are similar to or near to your tinnitus frequency so the auditory neurons can reorganize, theoretically at least cochlear tinnitus without much or no loss of hearing could reduce if not resolve, this may also be the reason why some people are able to recover after 6 months, a year or 2
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC21510/
Although only a consistent followup with some one attempting this like ACRN or NWN (and benefiting from) can determine whether it is true, my personal opinion is its probably our best bet.
I also have this feeling perticularly for musicians or people whose tinnitus was music induced that if you have a perticular graphic equilizer setting you like it very well may represent your tonal map settings i.e. which group of neurons fire at what rate and how much of that input is to be interpreted as what intensity and what type of sound. I arrive at this simply by the fact that most musicians and music lovers like a flat balanced music composition (i.e. where the entire range of sound seems well balanced)....onset of tinnitus disturbs this balance and while reorganization takes place, generally after the onset we all tend to avoid this input hence the reorganization remains incomplete and thius even though tinnitus remains, over the years it decreases due to slow reorganization or a stoppage of reorganization. Hence it would seem habituation while seemingly good may actually impede resolution.
heres what i mean to say
for all of us sound should sound balanced as in
= = = = = = = = =
now when we listen to music, we choose a setting that gives us the above perception, supposedly in my case its like this
= = = = =
= = = =
= =
now after the T attack, tonotopic reorganization occurs but we no longer have the above balance our brains use whatever input they get to reorganize and try and return to this base level.
However since our lives change and theres no longer the same kind of input reorganization does not occur to the extent that is required and T may persist.
So what might be a way out is
1. detect your current tonotopic map, by listening to some familiar music (probably your favourate songs)...try and use the graphic equalizer to achieve the best possible balance.
2. then slowly over a period of time say may be 3 months change the equilizer setting TOWARDS the one your preferred originally.
If this approach works (HYPOTHETICAL OFCOURSE), your barin will in the process correct the gain on each neuron slowly to eventually reduce or eliminate T.
This alone would not address the problem though, cause theirs the question of the resting state or when the brain should not expect input, that i believe is governed by intensity of input, if our brain realities that input is no longer expected at particular frequencies it will not increase the gain on these channels thus not producing T.
So suppose you are sleeping with white noise on (Again with the same equilizer settings). At night while sleeping you should attempt to keep matching or just covering the T. and then gradually over time decreasing it for the brain to learn to accept lower input.
The above is just an idea i've been forming, its a very very basic theory to a complicated problem, and ofcourse is absolutely baseless, but I would sure like some thoughts
especially
@Steve and
@Markku , what you say, any musicians around, please do comment.
Appologies for the long post by the way.
Cheers
Dhaval
Member
