New Device Aims to Stop Ringing in Your Ears

Tinnitus, or ringing in the ears, affects around 50 million Americans and requires about $2.26 billion annually in treatment costs. It is caused by damage to the ears by loud noises. University of Michigan engineers are working on a device to treat the disorder, which targets the nerves in the jaw and face with sound and electrical stimulation to reduce the hyperactivity in the nerves that can lead to Tinnitus. The device is based on 15 years of research.

Transcript

00:00:03 We're wearing headphones more than ever and many are listening to loud music. That could be leading to more and more people suffering from a condition known as tinnitus, or ringing in the ears. An estimated 50 million Americans have the disorder. At the University of Michigan researchers are working on addressing the problem. So people hear sound but there isn't really external sound. This is sound that's generated within the brain. It could be that you go into a rock concert and you come out and you feel your ears are blocked, and you actually

00:00:37 hear tinnitus but then it goes away and you think everything's okay. But every time you go to another rock concert you're adding to that damage, and so you're increasing your chances of getting hearing loss and tinnitus in later years. So it's about 2.26 billion dollars that are projected costs for the treatment of tinnitus, and that's not even including young people using mp3 players, iPhones. There's definitely now an increased incidence of tinnitus in people below the age of 20. Some colleagues in the Boston area were showing that people who had tinnitus

00:01:13 could modulate that tinnitus by clenching their jaw or pushing on parts if their neck or the face. So it made these connections may be potentially important in the generation and maintenance of tinnitus. So we're developing this device it's a combined sound and electrical stimulation of the face or the neck, and we combine those two simulations in specific orders that we've determined to be relevant in our research. The auditory stimulus itself is just a headphone. It goes in and it blocks the ear canal so that we can maintain a good degree of isolation

00:01:49 from external sounds. The electrical stimulus itself is just an on-skin stimulus. The benefits of this for human trials in the future are vast. We are excited about this device because it's not just something we just cooked up. It's based on fifteen years of research showing how these two different sensory systems interacting when producing tinnitus. Tinnitus can be triggered by things other than loud noises. Researchers have found a connection with TMJ, temporomandibular joint disorder. They believe that because the nerves in your

00:02:21 jaw and face share connections with the auditory system, any hyperactivity in those nerves can lead to the hyperactivity that causes tinnitus as well. So this stimulation paradigm is designed to reduce that hyperactivity and then reduce the perception the tinnitud. This research has the potential to help millions of people if we can pin in, you know, we can zoom in into what's happening in the brain and then if we can develop something that can undo

00:02:51 aberrant circuitry that develops with tinnitus, then I think we can help a lot of people with this disorder. one mechanism that people are looking at very intently has to do with the possibility of damage to membranes hole formation membranes euronews by so-called amyloid-beta peptides these