Full confession: I’m a sucker for examples of how sensory input
changes the brain. And if the changes alleviate a problem that can range
from annoying to devastating, extra points. A study of a treatment for tinnitus therefore caught my eye. According to results presented last week at the American Academy of Audiology, a device called Neuromonics
and made by a company of the same name brought measurable improvement.
On the standard evaluation of how incapacitating the ringing in the ear
was, the device reduced patients’ psychological and emotional misery
from 46 to 20 after six months of treatment, scientists led by the
Cleveland Clinic’s Sharon Sandridge reported. It was a small study (just 45 patients), but intriguing nonetheless. Tinnitus
affects something like 50 million Americans. Lots of things can cause
it, including repeated exposure to loud noise, but what’s interesting is
that the problem is in the brain, not the ears. The Neuromonics device
therefore targets the auditory cortex. It delivers a special sound
(determined by the frequency of the ringing a patient reports) embedded
in soothing music. Listened to daily, the sound seems to rewire the
auditory cortex, training the brain to filter out the internal sounds so
the tinnitus doesn’t intrude on consciousness. |