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New tinnitus treatment emerges from blocking back-channels in the ear | The discovery of a strange mechanism between the ear and the brain could lead to a new potential tinnitus treatment
If some speakers in your sound system were broken, you might try to compensate by cranking up the volume on the ones that still work. It turns out that the brain does the same thing when damaged hair cells in the ear lead to hearing loss – and this could be causing your tinnitus.
“OCT lets us look down the ear canal, through the eardrum and bone into the cochlea, and measure how it’s working – non-invasively and without pain,” said John Oghalai, lead author of the study. The brain cranking the cochlea’s volume could produce that annoying ringing associated with tinnitus, like the hiss you hear when turning a speaker up too loud with nothing playing. On the positive side, the team now plans to test drugs that could block these backwards nerve fibers as a potential treatment for tinnitus, and related conditions like hyperacusis, where everyday sounds seem uncomfortably loud.
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