Tinnitus: Ringing in the Ear

This eBook discuss about the different types of tinnitus and how to discover which type of tinnitus you are suffering from.

Tinnitus ‘is a term that describes any sound a person can hear from inside their body rather than from an outside source’ (nhs, 2013). People usually hear sounds such as ringing, buzzing, humming or machine type noises. ‘Sometimes the noise pulsates at the same rate as your pulse’ (knott, 2012). The noises may vary in pitch and intensity and can come from either ear or both. The noise is more noticeable in a quiet place and people may find they are becoming more sensitive to normal everyday sounds.

To do this, the researchers exposed a second group of adult quail to the same hearing-damaging sound as the first and then injected them with radiolabeled thymidine. This allowed researchers to use autoradiography that produce low levels of background issues as well as being able to see 10 to 20 grains over red blood cells. The control birds were still given the injections, however, they were not exposed to the sound. The experimental group experienced the same pattern of damage as the birds in the previous experiment and thymidine was seen over hair cells and support cells in the damaged area. There was no thymidine observed outside of the damaged area. The transition zone of the basilar membrane, where tall and short hair cells are integrated, it seemed that the short cells were more often labeled than the tall cells. Tall cells do not lack the afferent auditory-nerve fiber innervation that is seen in short cells making them a more useful candidate for labeling. The researchers failed to identify location and mechanism of the activation of the precursor cells but remained hopeful that there may exist a way to restore inner ear sensory losses that are caused from injury of hair

Bilateral Pulsatile Tinnitus, Diagnostic Code 388.30, H93.A3 – “There are risks of stroke due to occlusion of blood vessels supplying normal brain.” [13]

Most existing research and models of auditory neuropathy has utilised gerbils. At present no robust model of auditory neuropathy in guinea pigs exists; previous guinea pig models have been used but these were not robust and were susceptible to confounding.

As an undergraduate, I performed research on deafness, investigating hearing regeneration and unique auditory phenotypes. Based on my work, I was selected to be a Post-Baccalaureate Fellow at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders within the National Institutes of Health. This is a two-year program (07/14-07/16). I lead three projects focused on novel clinical therapies to prevent hearing loss from ototoxic drugs—drugs that cause hearing loss in hundreds of thousands of patients. There exists the need for therapies that protect the inner ear from ototoxic drugs without altering their therapeutic effects, and the focus of my research has been to help develop novel therapies.

It is generally accepted that tinnitus is related to the changes in neural activity and maladaptive neuroplasticity of the auditory networks due to the damage in the auditory system. However, recent evidence obtained from neuroimaging studies show that both auditory and non-auditory structures are involved in the development of tinnitus (Leaver et al., 2011;

“Auditory Processing Disorder is a measurable neurological defect located in the higher auditory neural pathways. Sound waves enter each ear canal and are passed through the middle ear where they are “prepared” for delivery to the cochlea (part of the inner ear). The cochlea “transduces” the sound waves into electric nerve pulses, which are sent to the brain by way of the hearing nerve (VIII Cranial nerve). The eighth nerve inserts at the brainstem, where a complex network

Do you have ringing in your ears? If so, there's a good chance you have tinnitus. Tinnitus is not life threatening but the causes of ringing in the ears is hard to find.

As mentioned by McFadden, (1982) “tinnitus is a ‘conscious experience of a sound that originates in the head of its owner’” (Champlin, Muller, Mitchell, 1990, 816). This means that the individual hears sounds such ringing, buzzing, static, roaring as other sounds. Tinnitus can be classified by either two ways objective or sensorineural. Objective tinnitus is when the sound is able to be heard by the person experiencing it as well by the examiner (Champlin, Muller, Mitchell, 1990, 816). The purpose of the research was to measure the acoustics of objective tinnitus and identify a method for bruits to be reduced or eliminated (Champlin, Muller, Mitchell, 1990,

Usually called "ringing in the ears," tinnitus is able to manifest as buzzing, whistling, tapping, roaring, or perhaps even phantom music. Approximately fifteen % of Americans have tinnitus. It's not really a disease, but generally a warning sign of harm to the ear. Hearing doctors are able to figure out the underlying

Tinnitus is a medical term that is used to describe the perception of ringing, hissing, buzzing, or other sound in the ear when no external acoustic stimulus is present. In most cases, tinnitus is subjective - a phantom sound that is only heard by the individual who experiences it. In rare cases, tinnitus may be objective. The examiner, often with the aid of a stethoscope, can also hear objective tinnitus and the sounds are often muscular spasms in the middle ear or vascular noises that are pulsatile in nature. While objective tinnitus is rare, its cause is usually identifiable and curable, whereas subjective tinnitus is much more difficult to determine the cause and, to date, has no cure.

The various types of DCN neurons appear specialized for processing spectral cues. Responses of type IV neurons seem to be determined by neural circuits within the DCN (Oertel & Young, 2004) and show small “islands” (lateral inhibition) at high-intensity stimulation. This inhibitory network of type IV neurons may be a provision for the tuning of neural inputs from primary auditory nerve fibers. Therefore, the neural network and inhibition in the DCN render these specialized neurons sensitive to notches in the acoustic spectrum generated by the interaction of sound with the various structures of the torso (Imig, Bibikov, Poirier, Samson, 2000; Young, Spirous, Rice, Voigt, 1992). The main target of type IV neurons in the DCN is type O neurons in the IC. Type O neurons in the IC exhibit an inhibitory receptive field with a small area of excitation at low stimulus intensities. IC neurons show response to the frequency of a spectral notch with opposite characteristics to type IV neurons in the DCN, showing considerable excitatory responses for a single notch frequency, particularly at higher sound intensities, flanked by inhibitory regions

An auditory brainstem response is an electrical potential generated from the changes in neural activity when an acoustic stimulus is presented into the ear. Stimuli in the form of clicks, tonebursts or chirps are transmitted through a transducer and measured using surface electrodes positioned on the scalp. The elicited waveform response consists of 7 waves that occur within a period of 10ms after the presented stimuli. Each waveform peak is labeled from I-VII where each wave corresponds to a neural generator within the auditory pathway. Just like other auditory evoked potentials such as the middle-latency response, the response depends relatively on the pathological factors, non-pathological factors, acquisition parameters, stimulus parameters as well as the noise and interference. Consequently, this has meant that a great deal of research has been conducted into investigating these potential effects on the ABR, especially as it is commonly used in clinical practice such as for evaluating retrocochlear pathology, detecting permanent childhood hearing loss in newborn hearing screens and intraoperative monitoring during surgery. These findings usually influence the test conditions used in protocols and guidance for clinical practice. Whilst previous literature focus their experiments in order to find a significant difference in the ABR waveform, very few studies explore what these parameters and factors have on the quality aspect of the recording. This study will primarily

Introduction: probably every human has once or even more heard sound that does not originate in the outside world. The sounds heard like: ringing, clicking, and roaring, buzzing sometimes even music or unclear voices. They may appear in one ear or both soft or loud, in low tones or high. They originate inside the head and they are known as tinnitus. Tinnitus can lead to a wide array of serious and minor disorders of the ear and of the body in general. Some motives are reasonably well understood, but most are not. Effective treatment has been established for some cases of tinnitus, but for most, effectiveness of treatment continues to be unpredictable. Tinnitus is not a disease. It is a symptom that can result from a number of underlying causes.