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Topic: Reducing the loudness of tinnitus by listening to tailor-made notch mu (Read 26974 times) previous topic - next topic
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Reducing the loudness of tinnitus by listening to tailor-made notch mu

"Listening to tailor-made notched music reduces tinnitus loudness and tinnitus-related auditory cortex activity," by Hidehiko Okamoto, Henning Stracke, Wolfgang Stoll, and Christo Pantev

It seems that it is possible to reduce the perceived loudness of tinnitus by having people listen to music over a long period of time with their problem frequencies, and frequencies nearby, eliminated from the playback.

Here's the description from PNAS:

Quote
Tailored music therapy reduces ear ringing
Tinnitus, often referred to as "ringing in the ears," is the most common hearing disorder in industrialized countries, with 1-3% of the population acknowledging hearing ringing loud enough to decrease their quality of life. Although the precise cause of the ringing is unknown, recent neurophysiological studies have shown that the auditory cortex is reorganized in most individuals with tinnitus, and the amount of brain distortion is correlated with the perceived loudness of ringing. Hidehiko Okamoto et al. developed a treatment aimed at decreasing the loudness of the ringing by developing individually tailored musical treatments and stripping out frequencies in music that correspond to the individual's tinnitus frequency. The authors identified a one-octave band around the patient's tinnitus frequency and removed this swath of frequencies from the music's energy spectrum. After one year of listening to these "notched" musical therapies, patients reported a significant decrease in the loudness of ringing compared to a group of tinnitus patients who listened to music in which frequencies were randomly removed. The therapy is inexpensive and could be used to rewire distorted regions of the auditory cortex that seem to trigger and maintain tinnitus, according to the authors. — B.P.T.


I was unaware that this was possible, but it's certainly cool.

Reducing the loudness of tinnitus by listening to tailor-made notch mu

Reply #1
I've heard about this a long time ago. But I always thought they added the tinnitus sounds and frequencies to the music, so that the brain gets desensitized to the tinnitus noise.

Reducing the loudness of tinnitus by listening to tailor-made notch mu

Reply #2
I was going to say the same thing, but I did not put it in my first post because I assumed I simply misunderstood the issue. I see it going one of two ways:

1. Including frequencies for which that person experiences tinnitus will stimulate whatever part of the ear picks up those frequencies and possibly worsen the issue. By excluding the problem frequencies for a very long time, the receptors that pick up those frequencies... settle? I am not sure what I am talking about here (obviously), but it must be something of that sort for the proposition to be true, and apparently it is.

2. By including the problem frequencies at emphasized levels, the brain will recognize that it is being too sensitive to those frequencies and diminish them. This will result in diminished tinnitus when nothing is playing.

According to this research, the assumption we both made - number two - is incorrect. I do not have access to the full article, but it has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, so it must have some quality research behind it.

Reducing the loudness of tinnitus by listening to tailor-made notch mu

Reply #3
Treatments based on Tomatis's work, such as those from Sound Therapy International, claim to cure tinnitus for most people. My reading never suggested that the tinnitus material was different than that for other hearing problems, but possibly some details of use differ.

Reducing the loudness of tinnitus by listening to tailor-made notch mu

Reply #4
"Listening to tailor-made notched music reduces tinnitus loudness and tinnitus-related auditory cortex activity," by Hidehiko Okamoto, Henning Stracke, Wolfgang Stoll, and Christo Pantev

It seems that it is possible to reduce the perceived loudness of tinnitus by having people listen to music over a long period of time with their problem frequencies, and frequencies nearby, eliminated from the playback.


Here's the abstract:

Quote
Maladaptive auditory cortex reorganization may contribute to the generation and maintenance of tinnitus. Because cortical organization can be modified by behavioral training, we attempted to reduce tinnitus loudness by exposing chronic tinnitus patients to self-chosen, enjoyable music, which was modified (“notched”) to contain no energy in the frequency range surrounding the individual tinnitus frequency. After 12 months of regular listening, the target patient group (n = 8) showed significantly reduced subjective tinnitus loudness and concomitantly exhibited reduced evoked activity in auditory cortex areas corresponding to the tinnitus frequency compared to patients who had received an analogous placebo notched music treatment (n = 8). These findings indicate that tinnitus loudness can be significantly diminished by an enjoyable, low-cost, custom-tailored notched music treatment, potentially via reversing maladaptive auditory cortex reorganization.


The key phrase is right up front:
"Maladaptive auditory cortex reorganization may contribute to the generation and maintenance of tinnitus."

IOW, this is based on a questionable hypothesis about one of many possible causes of tinnitis.  A method of treatment was tried that was in itself questionable. A very limited experiment was done, but extrapolationg from that to the general population of tinnitus suffers wouuld be questionable to say the least.

I suspect that are any number of journals that would refuse this article or something like it on the grounds that it a very limited experiment based on speculation.

If I was going to paraphrase the above, its like saying that Washing a car might or might not make its engine last longer, and a 1 year test based on a non-random sample of 8, or 0.000001% of all cars shows that clean cars are perceived by their owners to run better.


Reducing the loudness of tinnitus by listening to tailor-made notch mu

Reply #5
In this case, fingers crossed it works for most sufferers. As one of them myself, I'll follow this post's progress eagerly in case someone who actually had access to the full article or possess the know-how to question or endorse it steps in to shed some light on the subject.

I know that's slightly unrelated but that somehow reminds me of MP3's own >16KHz cut-out performed by most CODECS: last say someone's tinnitus hiss is emcompassed within that region (and they usually are that high) and they've been listening to those same MP3-encoded files for years (if not a decade) - how come no one's reported any change on their condition so far?

For the test's own simplistic approach, I wonder what tools one would need to achieve this frequency-selective playback (a foobar plugin, for instance  other than the encoder.
Listen to the music, not the media it's on.
União e reconstrução

Reducing the loudness of tinnitus by listening to tailor-made notch mu

Reply #6
In this case, fingers crossed it works for most sufferers. As one of them myself, I'll follow this post's progress eagerly in case someone who actually had access to the full article or possess the know-how to question or endorse it steps in to shed some light on the subject.


You have a PM.

Quote
I know that's slightly unrelated but that somehow reminds me of MP3's own >16KHz cut-out performed by most CODECS: last say someone's tinnitus hiss is emcompassed within that region (and they usually are that high) and they've been listening to those same MP3-encoded files for years (if not a decade) - how come no one's reported any change on their condition so far?


In this test's 23 subjects, the tinnitus frequencies  are stated as being between 2375 and 8000Hz. Is that atypical?

Quote
For the test's own simplistic approach, I wonder what tools one would need to achieve this frequency-selective playback (a foobar plugin, for instance  other than the encoder.


Reducing the loudness of tinnitus by listening to tailor-made notch mu

Reply #7
Quote
I know that's slightly unrelated but that somehow reminds me of MP3's own >16KHz cut-out performed by most CODECS: last say someone's tinnitus hiss is emcompassed within that region (and they usually are that high) and they've been listening to those same MP3-encoded files for years (if not a decade) - how come no one's reported any change on their condition so far?


In this test's 23 subjects, the tinnitus frequencies  are stated as being between 2375 and 8000Hz. Is that atypical?



Hmm... after comparing my tinnitus to what I can remember single sine waves sound like, I could swear mine rings in at a much higher pitch than that. Either I'm wrong - simply because I've no scientifical certainty to back me up - or then Arnold's right on stating that they're just tackling here a tiny proportion of a diversified range of cases.
Listen to the music, not the media it's on.
União e reconstrução

Reducing the loudness of tinnitus by listening to tailor-made notch mu

Reply #8
Quote
I know that's slightly unrelated but that somehow reminds me of MP3's own >16KHz cut-out performed by most CODECS: last say someone's tinnitus hiss is emcompassed within that region (and they usually are that high) and they've been listening to those same MP3-encoded files for years (if not a decade) - how come no one's reported any change on their condition so far?


In this test's 23 subjects, the tinnitus frequencies  are stated as being between 2375 and 8000Hz. Is that atypical?



Hmm... after comparing my tinnitus to what I can remember single sine waves sound like, I could swear mine rings in at a much higher pitch than that. Either I'm wrong - simply because I've no scientifical certainty to back me up - or then Arnold's right on stating that they're just tackling here a tiny proportion of a diversified range of cases.


You could try playing back sine waves (not loudly) to work out what frequency it is. for instance http://www.audiorelief.co.uk/en/tinnitus_test.html
which goes up to 11kHz. (my laptop's speakers seem to have problems playing 17kHz for example, so if you try to play high frequencies try headphones)

Reducing the loudness of tinnitus by listening to tailor-made notch mu

Reply #9
I agree that this "study" doesn't look like Class A work, at least from the abstract.  Double blinded, controlled, and with bigger numbers would be more solid.

Still it seems fairly harmless to play around with this.  Is there an add-in that can create a "band stop" filter in foobar2000?  Even a DSP with more sliders than the default could do it.

Reducing the loudness of tinnitus by listening to tailor-made notch mu

Reply #10
I agree that this "study" doesn't look like Class A work, at least from the abstract.  Double blinded, controlled, and with bigger numbers would be more solid.

Still it seems fairly harmless to play around with this.  Is there an add-in that can create a "band stop" filter in foobar2000?  Even a DSP with more sliders than the default could do it.


Don't get me started about the equalizer in FooBar. ;-(

What it really needs is the ability to load VST plug-ins like Audacity can.


Reducing the loudness of tinnitus by listening to tailor-made notch mu

Reply #12
I am very interested in this as I suffer from tinnitus. As the tinnitus frequency is different between my left and right ear, I'd need a separate EQ for each channel. Anyone know how to do this with foobar2000?
Blubb

Reducing the loudness of tinnitus by listening to tailor-made notch mu

Reply #13
I am very interested in this as I suffer from tinnitus. As the tinnitus frequency is different between my left and right ear, I'd need a separate EQ for each channel. Anyone know how to do this with foobar2000?


One solution: VST wrapper + energyXTE + 2 x Electri-Q.
http://www.yohng.com/foobarvst.zip
http://www.xt-hq.com/download/energyXTE.zip
http://www.aixcoustic.com/index.php/Electr...osihfopit/30/0/

Split the signal to 2 mono signals and then just route Input L/R --> Electri-Q L / Electri-Q R --> Output L/R


Juha

Reducing the loudness of tinnitus by listening to tailor-made notch mu

Reply #14
I am very interested in this as I suffer from tinnitus. As the tinnitus frequency is different between my left and right ear, I'd need a separate EQ for each channel. Anyone know how to do this with foobar2000?

Another (probably less professional than Juha's) solution could be Equalizer split:

Quote
This is a meta-DSP that feeds each channel into a separate equalizer.

It runs without the need for additional components.
This is HA. Not the Jerry Springer Show.

Reducing the loudness of tinnitus by listening to tailor-made notch mu

Reply #15
I've had problems with tinnitus for the past 2 years or so as well. Always affects the same ear, and it doesn't seem like there's any rhyme or reason to when it strikes. It's most annoying when it makes it hard for me to hear others when they're talking to me. Taking the test linked about, it seems that my tinnitus is around 8000Hz or so.

One thing I've found that does seem to work when it's really bad (seems to vary a lot in severity). Is listening to the tone at the link below. The pdf linked is supposed to explain a bit about it, but it's way too technical for me.

http://www.ucihs.uci.edu/hesp/news/ARO2007%20Tinnitus.pdf
http://www.healthaffairs.uci.edu/hesp/news...r_6960_1min.wav


Perhaps this will be helpful!

Reducing the loudness of tinnitus by listening to tailor-made notch mu

Reply #16
thanks, zipr, for the links!

Reducing the loudness of tinnitus by listening to tailor-made notch mu

Reply #17
Funny that this topic comes up again after such a long time. When I read it last year I experimented with such a notch filter myself, since I suffer from tinnitus too. I never posted the results here, because it turned out that I couldn't stand listening with such a notch filter for a longer period of time. The notch is between 8 and 10 khz for me, causing the music to sound dull and lifeless. Of course you could argue that one can accustom to that, and I really tried, but it doesn't work because even if you consequently listen to all kind of music with this filter, you always compare it to how "reality" sounds.

 

Reducing the loudness of tinnitus by listening to tailor-made notch mu

Reply #18
Funny that this topic comes up again after such a long time. When I read it last year I experimented with such a notch filter myself, since I suffer from tinnitus too. I never posted the results here, because it turned out that I couldn't stand listening with such a notch filter for a longer period of time. The notch is between 8 and 10 khz for me, causing the music to sound dull and lifeless. Of course you could argue that one can accustom to that, and I really tried, but it doesn't work because even if you consequently listen to all kind of music with this filter, you always compare it to how "reality" sounds.


white noise with notch filter?  any thoughts?