Hi all.
I suspect that there is some form of audio pattern or technique by which tinnitus could at least be mostly silenced. It doesn't seem like one's been found yet.
There are a few reasons I think that. One is that, certain sounds/experiences (such as taking a long shower) can completely mask the sound of tinnitus for me, and transform the sound to be more mellow afterward, and at approximately only 20% of its original intensity (for annoyance-level that's certainly true, anyway). Seeing that this can happen for normal, unplanned life experiences, I believe we could replicate those effects even more strongly if we set that as our exclusive goal.
As tinnitus causes significant distraction in my life, and from that I both enjoy and gain skill through attempting software development for personal interests, (and from that we don't yet know how long off a solution from professional researchers is), I've decided to set out to try to uncover examples of these patterns and techniques.
I know, it's kind of far-fetched I'd just come across a solution through independent experimentation, but hey, it's sort of fun, gives me practice programming, and reduces anxiety in that I'm being proactive about it now.
So what would that experimentation look like? Well, one of the obvious projects would be to try to code a program that was expressive/powerful enough, that you could match the sound of your tinnitus almost exactly. We would then be able to see what the brain would do when put in a situation, that has what's essentially a robust residual inhibition (i.e. residual inhibition that doesn't fade away because the two noises are exactly the same and can't be separated/distinguished from each other).
Granted, it's unlikely people could easily create such a program, and especially not without collaboration. But it's something to think about, as an example that could be very useful (in any case, for understanding the phenomenon better). (I do wonder whether the brain would just adjust and shift down or up in frequency after encountering such a stimulus.)
Something that I think has more short-term potential is exploratorily modifying the ACRN protocol, and searching for patterns loosely similar to it (i.e. based on the same theoretical model, of using different tones to create neural subgroups in the brain that then stop having so much synchronicity/misfiring amongst themselves) Obviously we don't have the original system's source code or hardware; it would instead be based on generalfuzz's excellent online implementation here, which uses browser-based HTML5 Web Audio libraries: http://www.generalfuzz.net/acrn
Really I think that tool is the first real proof for myself that an online program can substantially help for tinnitus--not merely masking the sound, but actually changing the intensity of the sounds when you're away from it. I've only been doing it for about a week, so it's admittedly quite preliminary results, but already I've noticed a substantial reduction in loudness and 'non-ignorability' of the sounds. I was able to go to a friend's house a few days ago, and actually enjoy the lack of motion of the night! (which was odd, because I still heard the dampened noise but was hardly bothered; I think part of it was that I had emotional relief from having found something able to modulate the noises finally)
So what has come out of these plans so far? (I'll update the below as the tools develop)
1) http://venryx.herokuapp.com/others/tools/noise
It's a white noise generator. What makes it a little different is that instead of setting a frequency or dragging a few sliders, you actually draw onto a graph exactly what frequencies to target and what volumes each frequency should have. Also, you can set the "tempo" of the noise/tone-sequences, and save and load "profiles", which makes it easy to experiment with targeting your tinnitus (especially if you have multiple ranges).
So it does have some unique features, although on the whole, it's true that there are better white-noise generators out there. Mainly it's intended as the base for a more 'exploratory' tool, which will allow you to apply 'transformations' to the noise to make it better match your actual tinnitus. So for example, a transformation that will slowly randomize/shift the frequencies, to keep your brain from getting used to a static frequency map; or a way to add pauses in the playback for a given duration every so often, to help break the constancy of it. (I think that's a major part of how existing masker tools let the tinnitus "seep out" of them, even covering the tinnitus' frequency spectrum and outdoing it in volume)
Anyhow, I thought I'd make a thread for it to keep you guys updated, and keep things organized. If anyone wants to help with one of the projects, let me know and I'll set up a github project for it. They're supposed to be open source, but I'm too lazy to get them harbored like that unless I know there are others who could benefit from the source files.
Thanks for reading, and let me know if you think of ways to expand the software, or have ideas for any new tools to create and experiment with. +V
I suspect that there is some form of audio pattern or technique by which tinnitus could at least be mostly silenced. It doesn't seem like one's been found yet.
There are a few reasons I think that. One is that, certain sounds/experiences (such as taking a long shower) can completely mask the sound of tinnitus for me, and transform the sound to be more mellow afterward, and at approximately only 20% of its original intensity (for annoyance-level that's certainly true, anyway). Seeing that this can happen for normal, unplanned life experiences, I believe we could replicate those effects even more strongly if we set that as our exclusive goal.
As tinnitus causes significant distraction in my life, and from that I both enjoy and gain skill through attempting software development for personal interests, (and from that we don't yet know how long off a solution from professional researchers is), I've decided to set out to try to uncover examples of these patterns and techniques.
I know, it's kind of far-fetched I'd just come across a solution through independent experimentation, but hey, it's sort of fun, gives me practice programming, and reduces anxiety in that I'm being proactive about it now.
So what would that experimentation look like? Well, one of the obvious projects would be to try to code a program that was expressive/powerful enough, that you could match the sound of your tinnitus almost exactly. We would then be able to see what the brain would do when put in a situation, that has what's essentially a robust residual inhibition (i.e. residual inhibition that doesn't fade away because the two noises are exactly the same and can't be separated/distinguished from each other).
Granted, it's unlikely people could easily create such a program, and especially not without collaboration. But it's something to think about, as an example that could be very useful (in any case, for understanding the phenomenon better). (I do wonder whether the brain would just adjust and shift down or up in frequency after encountering such a stimulus.)
Something that I think has more short-term potential is exploratorily modifying the ACRN protocol, and searching for patterns loosely similar to it (i.e. based on the same theoretical model, of using different tones to create neural subgroups in the brain that then stop having so much synchronicity/misfiring amongst themselves) Obviously we don't have the original system's source code or hardware; it would instead be based on generalfuzz's excellent online implementation here, which uses browser-based HTML5 Web Audio libraries: http://www.generalfuzz.net/acrn
Really I think that tool is the first real proof for myself that an online program can substantially help for tinnitus--not merely masking the sound, but actually changing the intensity of the sounds when you're away from it. I've only been doing it for about a week, so it's admittedly quite preliminary results, but already I've noticed a substantial reduction in loudness and 'non-ignorability' of the sounds. I was able to go to a friend's house a few days ago, and actually enjoy the lack of motion of the night! (which was odd, because I still heard the dampened noise but was hardly bothered; I think part of it was that I had emotional relief from having found something able to modulate the noises finally)
So what has come out of these plans so far? (I'll update the below as the tools develop)
1) http://venryx.herokuapp.com/others/tools/noise
It's a white noise generator. What makes it a little different is that instead of setting a frequency or dragging a few sliders, you actually draw onto a graph exactly what frequencies to target and what volumes each frequency should have. Also, you can set the "tempo" of the noise/tone-sequences, and save and load "profiles", which makes it easy to experiment with targeting your tinnitus (especially if you have multiple ranges).
So it does have some unique features, although on the whole, it's true that there are better white-noise generators out there. Mainly it's intended as the base for a more 'exploratory' tool, which will allow you to apply 'transformations' to the noise to make it better match your actual tinnitus. So for example, a transformation that will slowly randomize/shift the frequencies, to keep your brain from getting used to a static frequency map; or a way to add pauses in the playback for a given duration every so often, to help break the constancy of it. (I think that's a major part of how existing masker tools let the tinnitus "seep out" of them, even covering the tinnitus' frequency spectrum and outdoing it in volume)
Anyhow, I thought I'd make a thread for it to keep you guys updated, and keep things organized. If anyone wants to help with one of the projects, let me know and I'll set up a github project for it. They're supposed to be open source, but I'm too lazy to get them harbored like that unless I know there are others who could benefit from the source files.
Thanks for reading, and let me know if you think of ways to expand the software, or have ideas for any new tools to create and experiment with. +V
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