Just an idea for treatment?

[Fulltimemuso]

Ok, this is probably a crazy idea and doomed to fail but has anyone tried this?

Let's say you have a tinnitus tone at approx 5khz. This to me would feel like something in my hearing system is damaged/miscalibrated/misaligned or it's the classic hair cell death for that particular frequency. Either way, for whatever reason my brain is now amplifying this phantom tone and I perceive it as a ringing.

Could I recalibrate my brain?

My thinking is that I can easily approximate this tone using my musical production software (I do a little production on the side). If I actively listened to this tone for an hour, I'm sure my brain would start to block it out. Then once the tone has stopped, that new calibration will stay there for a while.

Could this then reduce the perception of the tinnitus tone at that frequency?

Ok, the effect might be temporary but perhaps if you listened to it at a low level while sleeping it might last all day?

Anyone tried this?

Just an idea, I might give it a go. I can;t see it doing any harm if the volume level is kept low.

[Jimbob7]

Tried. My background is film, theatre and TV - one of my best friends is big in A/V Studio sound production/ editing, etc.

He grabbed me early on and in the studio we recreated my T sounds - then we "inverted" them and fed them back - no dice.

Problem is - Noise cancelling works on, well, noise.

Tinnitus isn't noise. It's signal.

Honestly, we really tried this using some of the most expensive rigs in the UK at one of the most prominent film studios/ facilities.

It was a shit that it didn't work - but logically - it makes sense why it did not.

Noise cancelling or inverting works perfectly on taking noise with volume and EQ parameters and inverting them and feeding those back to the Audiory System.

Unfortunately, Tinnitus is not volumetrically measurable or discernable (to anyone but ourselves).

That's the problem. Now, going forward - and we always have to be optimistic - there is a chance that a brain implant of some kind will be able to do some sort of signal-interrupt - but in the mean time . . . Habituation I guess.

[Fulltimemuso in reply to Jimbob7]

Ok interesting what you tried, I've actually had a go at something similar at home. In this case though this is not the same as I'm proposing.

I'm not intending to phase invert the sound to cancel it out. I'm thinking to force myself to hear an amplified version of the tinnitus tone, so that my brain can try and reduce that frequency response.

Maybe this still wouldn't work for the reasons you said, but I'm going to give it a try anyway!

[Burntorangeheresy in reply to Fulltimemuso]

Cool idea....

[Jimbob7 in reply to Fulltimemuso]

Umm, just take it easy with that though as you don't want to make anything worse! Don't ramp it up to "11" too quickly.

I did find that playing similar sounding tones do sort of make my own high frequency T kind of phase in and out - if that makes sense - a bit like a flanger. It can provide some masking of a kind.

[Burntorangeheresy in reply to Jimbob7]

Cool .. if failure.

[D-w-L2023 in reply to Jimbob7]

As a musician I had similar thoughts. Identify the frequency, invert the waveform and bingo, T cancelled! I talked to an audiologist about the idea some years ago.

She said that if it was an externally generated noise there was some chance you could build a cancelling unit. Unfortunately, it's not an externally generated noise (as you've pointed out).

[SueX]

I like that idea! What happens though when the tinnitus changes frequency? And what about the fact that there can be multiple frequencies going on in your head at the same time?

[Jimbob7 in reply to SueX]

You try and generate the sound that is closest to the T sound that you find most annoying I guess Sue.

[Fulltimemuso in reply to SueX]

Hi, yes the sound I would listen to would be a very specific combination of several tones that I'd create using music software.