Millions of people around the world know what it's like to deal with constant ringing, buzzing and ringing in their ears. These are the 'ghost' noises that characterize tinnitus, a disorder that can be debilitating. An App that provides a sort of sound therapy could help reduce its impact in a few weeks. The strategy also combines a training course. Mission: train your brain to overcome tinnitus. The approach was developed by an international team of researchers bringing together experts from Australian, New Zealand, French and Belgian universities. The results of their work are published in the journal 'Frontiers in Audiology and Otology'. The developed method, they explain, could offer some hope to people who suffer from the problem (especially elderly people, but also children) and who are often told that there is not much that can be done. People who face long waits for treatment, or sometimes cannot afford the costs of specialist support.
The app featured in the study is called 'MindEar', and can be tried alone on a smartphone. The initial study worked with 30 patients, of whom nearly two-thirds experienced “clinically significant improvement.” The team is now planning larger studies in the UK in collaboration with University College London Hospital. Tinnitus is very common, affecting up to 1 in 4 people, experts say. For some, it disappears without intervention. For others it can change their lives in a negative way by affecting hearing, mood, concentration, sleep and, in more serious cases, causing anxiety or depression. “In the trial two-thirds of our chatbot users noticed improvements after 16 weeks. This period was shortened to just 8 weeks when patients additionally had access to an online psychologist,” says lead author Fabrice Bardy, an audiologist at the university of Auckland and co-founder of MindEar.
“Cognitive behavioral therapy is known to help people with tinnitus, but requires a trained psychologist. It is expensive and often difficult to access,” says Suzanne Purdy, professor of psychology at the University of Auckland. “MindEar uses a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness and relaxation exercises, as well as sound therapy to help train the brain's reaction so that tinnitus can be ruled out. The sound you perceive takes a backseat and is much less annoying.”
How does it work? The researchers' strategy exploits a gift of our brain which, since before birth, learns to filter sounds deemed irrelevant. As we grow, the brain learns how to filter the environmental noises of a busy street, of an air conditioner, of a person sleeping and snoring next to us. Most alarms, however, like those of smoke detectors for example, bypass this filter and activate a sense of alert in people, even if they are asleep. Something similar happens with tinnitus. This disorder occurs when a person hears a sound in the head or ears. Even though there is no external sound source or risk in the surrounding environment, the mind reacts with an alert response.
The sound is perceived as an unpleasant, irritating or intrusive noise that cannot be turned off. And the brain focuses on it insistently, training itself to pay even more attention to this phantom noise. The approach with the App works in the opposite way, in practice: by training to actively pay less attention to the tinnitus, it becomes easier to disconnect. MindEar aims to help people practice concentration through a training program, enabling the mind and body to suppress hormones and stress responses and thus reducing the brain's concentration on tinnitus, explain the researchers who hope it can become one more accessible and quickly available tool for those who are still waiting for support to deal with the disorder.
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