Scientists have shown that exposure to loud sounds, age, head or neck traumas, and hearing loss are all linked to tinnitus, or ringing in the ears. However, little is known about what’s truly going on in the body to cause it.
The idea that an underlying cause of tinnitus
may be comparable to phantom limb syndrome, a disease in which patients sense pain in limbs they no longer have, is supported by a new study published on Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.
The principal author of the research, Stéphane Maison, a clinical audiologist at Mass Eye and Ear in Boston, said, “So the idea is, okay, I lost some hearing, my brain no longer receives some auditory information.” According to him, this causes the brain to become more active in an attempt to make up for the hearing loss, which is why “you start to hear a noise that’s not there.” tinnitus
According to Maison, the scientific community is against this explanation of tinnitus since it presumes that a patient had hearing loss prior to experiencing tinnitus. He said, nevertheless, that many tinnitus sufferers are nonetheless able to function properly on standard hearing tests. In these assessments, also known as pure tone tests, patients are often asked to raise their hands in response to beeps in order to gauge the smallest sounds they are able to distinguish at various pitches.
The pure tone test evaluates nerves that are responsive to softer sounds, according to Maison’s analysis of the study’s results. It does not take into consideration the “hidden” hearing loss brought on by damage to the inner ear’s auditory nerves, which are sensitive to louder noises.
Maison said, “We now know that the hearing test does not tell you the whole story.”
A pure tone test was administered to 294 people in the research, aged 18 to 72, and all of them performed properly. Three groups of participants were identified: 201 people who had never had tinnitus, 64 who had encountered it briefly, and 29 who had been dealing with continuous tinnitus for at least six months.
In order to evaluate the participants’ responses to clicking noises in the inner ear auditory nerve and brain, the researchers used electrodes placed in their ear canals and on their scalps to perform a hearing loss test.
According to Maison, the data revealed that those with tinnitus had much less activity in the auditory nerve and hyperactivity in the brainstem as compared to those with “normal hearing.” According to him, this shows that people who have tinnitus may have damaged auditory nerves that are unable to convey signals to their brains. This might lead to abnormal brain activity that causes the patients to experience noises like buzzing, ringing, or hissing.tinnitus
According to the research, up to 15% of persons globally suffer from tinnitus.
“An important step towards a cure is anything that is being done to better understand what might cause tinnitus,” said Maison.
The analogy to phantom limb syndrome, according to Laura Hermann, an audiologist at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore who was not involved in the research, was accurate.
She pointed out that several approaches to quantifying the “hidden hearing loss” in the auditory nerve linked to tinnitus were described in the research. According to her, electrocochleography is a test that may be used in audiology clinics to assess how the inner ear responds to sound in a comparable manner.
Hermann said, “I found that to be really intriguing, as many audiologists possess the necessary equipment for that.” “So, you know, that might be a really cool way to validate these people’s complaints when they come in.”
The research found that those with incapacitating tinnitus often have trouble falling asleep and experience anxiety or depression.tinnitus
Aniruddha Deshpande, head of the speech-language-hearing sciences department at Hofstra University in New York, said that while tinnitus has no known treatment, there are easy precautions individuals may take to safeguard themselves and perhaps avoid the illness.
According to Deshpande, “anything that can cause hearing loss can actually cause tinnitus because there may be similarities in the underlying pathophysiology.” Thus, “we can all take commonsense precautions to avoid exposure to loud noises.”
According to Deshpande, loud music or headphones have become the most prevalent causes of hearing loss in recent years. Previous study shows that individuals should listen to their music at no louder than 50% of their phones’ maximum level, while further research is necessary to create a “objective” threshold of what is deemed safe, according to Deshpande.
Wearing earplugs or muffs helps avoid harm in situations when you can’t control the noise around you, like concerts, he added.
Original News: NBC NEWS/Katie Mogg
