What If One Had the Audio Cortex Surgically Removed?

[grate_biff]

Drastic and invasive, I agree.

Has this been tried at all?

Is it possible to pinpoint and remove the part of brain only responsible for processing the high frequencies, for example?

 

[Niklas]

or remove the hyperactive neurons.

 

[Bill Bauer]

My dad died of brain cancer. I know the doctors can use radiotherapy to kill the cells in any small region of the brain they want...

 

[grate_biff]

My dad died of brain cancer. I know the doctors can use radiotherapy to kill the cells in any small region of the brain they want...

Really? So they can do it without going in?

Maybe there is a way to temporary paralyze part of the brain while the patient is awake, then when the T disappear they know what to remove or kill?

I know they do something similar with parkinson patients, and thats even a problem deep within the brain.
And the audio cortex or DCN, is I believe, on the surface of the brain. Should be easier to get to, right?

I would appreciate input from anyone who have any more knowledge about this.

There is no secret exactly where sound is processed in the brain:

 

[Bill Bauer]

So they can do it without going in?

They were able to do this back in 1995.

Maybe there is a way to temporary paralyze part of the brain while the patient is awake, then when the T disappear they know what to remove or kill?

I remember reading that they can see the regions of the brain activated when one has T on MRI scans...

 

[grate_biff]

I remember reading that they can see the regions of the brain activated when one has T on MRI scans...

That is true. And I know it involves several parts of the brain. But also that it all starts in the auditory cortex.

Wow, what if they could remove the 10-16 kHz processing part of my brain on the right side.

Would not even impact hearing others speak to me, apart maybe from the "S"´s!!

I´d gladly sacrifice that to abolish T and H.

 

[krispin]

Wow! You are all going hardcore. Hate to think of them having a whoopsie! While frying out some brain cells, but I can understand the desperation.

 

[Bill Bauer]

Wow! You are all going hardcore. Hate to think of them having a whoopsie! While frying out some brain cells, but I can understand the desperation.

Radiotherapy is relatively safe (in the sense that the doctors don't seem to be worried about causing paralysis for their cancer patients, or burning out the wrong region of the brain). I am sure that it would have a reasonable chance of being effective...

 

[Dij111]

Wow! You are all going hardcore. Hate to think of them having a whoopsie! While frying out some brain cells, but I can understand the desperation.

I think some of us here would be willing to undergo a lobotomy if it could take away our tinnitus

 

[InfiniteLoop]

I totally agree that treating the T neurons as a tumor is a more realistic way to eliminate the T noise. All the regenerative, hearing loss curing methods are great initiatives, but it is going to take several lifetimes to solve the problem if ever. The downside of the "brain surgery" approach is the high risk of damaging something else, and the liabilities for doctors will be too high. A few years ago the HIFU method was tried for some tinnitus cases in Switzerland.

 

[OnceUponaTime]

Interesting. Now lets find a doctor who would do this.

 

[Bill Bauer]

The downside of the "brain surgery" approach is the high risk of damaging something else

Radiotherapy is very precise. If the doctors are not worried about this when it comes to brain cancer patients, they shouldn't be worried about it when it comes to severe T sufferers.

 

[Pleasure_Paulie]

No. Tinnitus is generated by many parts of the brain as detailed in some of the latest research.

 

[Bill Bauer]

No. Tinnitus is generated by many parts of the brain as detailed in some of the latest research.

First of all, one doesn't need to break each and every link of the chain in order to break the chain. And second of all, radiotherapy could definitely be used to burn out multiple small regions of the brain.

People with debilitating tinnitus, on the brink of suicide, might want to try to find doctors willing to do this...

 

[OnceUponaTime]

People with debilitating tinnitus, on the brink of suicide, might want to try to find doctors willing to do this...

Pardon my ignorance, but what kind of doctor would one need? Brain surgeon???

 

[Bill Bauer]

Pardon my ignorance, but what kind of doctor would one need? Brain surgeon???

A doctor who administers radiotherapy for brain cancer patients (an oncologist specializing in radiotherapy) would be able to destroy small region of the brain. Another doctor needs to tell that radiotherapy doctor what regions to target. That second doctor would need to use an MRI to determine the regions of the brain that cause T. I am not sure who that second doctor might be.

Another issue is that the tissue that radiotherapy normally destroys is cancer tissue. But of course small amounts of brain tissue around the tumor also end up being destroyed. Hopefully they can destroy regions of the brain large enough to have an impact on T, but small enough to minimize all of the possible side effects. My dad had a brain tumor that was the size of a golf ball. I imagine that the total volume of healthy brain tissue around that tumor that got destroyed with the tumor must have been significant. Yet my dad had no side effects (besides permanently losing hair in some patches on his head) following the radiotherapy.

 

[OnceUponaTime]

@Bill Bauer Thank you for the information. Very interesting. It will take "some" doctor to actually want to hear us and help us, as most of them dismiss us with "go home and live with it", "it is not going to kill you".

Very interesting idea/approach to this condition. Has anyone actually done this??

I know of someone who was in a terrible motorcycle accident and he lost a good part of his brain. He is still alive and living a normal life except he lost the sense of smell.

 

[grate_biff]

I know of someone who was in a terrible motorcycle accident and he lost a good part of his brain. He is still alive and living a normal life except he lost the sense of smell.

Thats weird and very interesting. The "smell center"(Olfactory Cortex) is placed right underneath the Auditory Cortex of the brain.

Still, it proves possible to remove particular senses with brain surgery.

Big question is, how accurate can one be regarding removing parts responsible for processing the frequencies you would want to get rid of? In my humble opinion, Tinnitus will have no way to hide and thus be GONE(of course along with your hearing of those frequencies)

https://www.quora.com/If-you-were-f...-its-overall-volume-where-would-it-be-and-why

 

[grate_biff]

No. Tinnitus is generated by many parts of the brain as detailed in some of the latest research.

But on also believe it all starts in the auditory cortex, right?
Anyway, great input!

 

[Pleasure_Paulie]

This thread has gone down a

But on also believe it all starts in the auditory cortex, right?
Anyway, great input!

I believe that would depend upon your origin of the tinnitus. I think there was a select few studies where people had their auditory Nerve cut and it only made a difference in some patients despite being deaf.

Tinnitus is being found to activate so many areas of the brain; this is why treatment let alone a cure is a challenge. We still don't know know what exact areas of the brain to target, and to make matters worse it may differ from patient to patient!!

I would look at treatments such as TRT that aim to reduce activities in areas of the brain tinnitus related. This will have to be individualised based upon the patient.

 

[SugarMagnolia]

Would not even impact hearing others speak to me, apart maybe from the "S"´s!!

Since developing H in my bad ear, it's the S's in people's speech, especially on the phone, that bother me. Do you also have trouble specifically with high-pitched sounds?

 

[grate_biff]

I believe that would depend upon your origin of the tinnitus. I think there was a select few studies where people had their auditory Nerve cut and it only made a difference in some patients despite being deaf.

I guess there is possible to have T, with out the involvement of the AC, but I wouldn´t know anything about that, or how it then is generated.

Having the audio nerve cut wouldn´t fix anything, bc the AC would still react to loss of input, right?

Tinnitus is being found to activate so many areas of the brain; this is why treatment let alone a cure is a challenge.

Sure it involves other parts of our brain, as do normal hearing and all our other "senses centers"

Surly, our senses are closely knit to our emotions:

If you eat something to your liking, the pleasure center of the brain would be involved.

If you see a hot chick, you may get aroused, and god knows how many parts of the brain that would involve.

My point is, if you remove the very place sound or perception of sound is processed in its origin, there is no need for other regions of the brain to get involved, is there?

What if one removed the center that processes our vision, would we still get a hard on by my former eksample? Probably not!!

Now, I would not like to know how that would be and I understand we are talking somewhat lobotomy here.

Still if there are nothing there to process neurons coming its way, would we still be able to percieve T and experience H?

I think it´s worth looking into!

 

[grate_biff]

I would look at treatments such as TRT that aim to reduce activities in areas of the brain tinnitus related

Please! To me TRT is the biggest hoax there is. Besides I´m not into the reducing the activity business. Im into there is nothing there to receive the activity business.

At least if Frequency TX fails to deliver. Building is better than destroying. But whatever works!

 

[grate_biff]

Since developing H in my bad ear, it's the S's in people's speech, especially on the phone, that bother me. Do you also have trouble specifically with high-pitched sounds?

Yes, HP sounds is what triggers my painfull reaktive T(which to me is H)
And its amazing how many everyday sound that implements HF´s.

My brain just can´t handle it, so I´m looking into removing the part(s) that can´t!

 

[InfiniteLoop]

@Pleasure_Paulie

The tinnnitus impact on the brain involves many networks and areas. That is why is a life changing condition. However, it is not obvious that the tinnitus perception involves so many regions. I will still think that eliminating a relatively minor key neurons will eliminate the noise. I will think that this kind of research would have had some precedent with terminally ill people with tinnitus or with brain tumor patients.

 

[Lane]

I know they do something similar with parkinson patients, and thats even a problem deep within the brain. And the audio cortex or DCN, is I believe, on the surface of the brain. Should be easier to get to, right? ...... I would appreciate input from anyone who have any more knowledge about this.

Hi @grate_biff, you may find this interesting:

A stroke of silence: tinnitus suppression following placement of a deep brain stimulation electrode with infarction in area LC.
Larson PS1, Cheung SW.
Author information

Abstract
The authors report on a case of tinnitus suppression following deep brain stimulation (DBS) for Parkinson disease. A perioperative focal vascular injury to area LC, a locus of the caudate at the junction of the head and body of the caudate nucleus, is believed to be the neuroanatomical correlate. A 56-year-old woman underwent surgery for implantation of a DBS lead in the subthalamic nucleus to treat medically refractory motor symptoms. She had comorbid tinnitus localized to both ears. The lead trajectory was adjacent to area LC. Shortly after surgery, she reported tinnitus suppression in both ears. Postoperative MRI showed focal hyperintensity of area LC on T2-weighted images. At 18 months, tinnitus localized to the ipsilateral ear remained completely silenced, and tinnitus localized to the contralateral ear was substantially suppressed due to left area LC injury. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first report of a discrete injury to area LC that resulted in bilateral tinnitus suppression. Clinicians treating patients with DBS may wish to include auditory phantom assessment as part of the neurological evaluation.

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[Wolfears]

Drastic and invasive, I agree.

Has this been tried at all?

Is it possible to pinpoint and remove the part of brain only responsible for processing the high frequencies, for example?

This was done in the 90's..I think a group of about 20 volunteers with debilitating tinnitus agreed to participate.
If I remember correctly, cutting of the audio nerve brought success to about 80% of patients....
There is no follow-up I could find, but I only imagine the other ones are likely dead by now, since they now lost any hope of masking their already brutal tinnitus.

 

[grate_biff]

Yes, but i´m not talking about cutting the audiotory nerve.
I´m talking about removing part of the brain.

 

[object16]

won't work, no doctor would ever risk losing their medical license doing this, and any trials would be unethical and would never be approved. unless you go to some country where you can pay a doctor to do anything, and in case like that you would be very stupid to take that kind of very obvious risk.
infarction of area LC of the brain is ok if you already have severe parkinson, but what happens if you dont have parkinson, and now you have a worse side effect from the treatment.
this kind of treatment is irreversible. anything go wrong, and there is no undoing it. maybe infarct of LC helps one patient in 10, but other 9 patients now have worse problems plus tinnitus, or what if it makes it permanently worse?

 

[Contrast]

This thread has gone down a


I believe that would depend upon your origin of the tinnitus. I think there was a select few studies where people had their auditory Nerve cut and it only made a difference in some patients despite being deaf.

Tinnitus is being found to activate so many areas of the brain; this is why treatment let alone a cure is a challenge. We still don't know know what exact areas of the brain to target, and to make matters worse it may differ from patient to patient!!

I would look at treatments such as TRT that aim to reduce activities in areas of the brain tinnitus related. This will have to be individualised based upon the patient.

TRT does not do anything related to reducing tinnitus volume.