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Re: Technique can pinpoint tinnitus
It's hard to form an opinion from a release from a PR office. But a
lot of papers on imaging and/or treatment of tinnitus neglect to
mention the etiology of the tinnitus. One can acquire permanent
tinnitus from drugs like quinine, cancer drugs like most of the
-platins, noise exposure, blunt trauma, or related to the onset of
Ménière's. While the behavioral manifestation is the same, there is no
good argument that all these causes lead to the same underlying
changes in the auditory pathway. So any paper that claims to have
found that a "Technique can pinpoint tinnitus" is bound to be met with
some measure of healthy doubt.
To quote Aage Møller in his "Tinnitus: presence and future" paper,
It is unfortunate that the same name, tinnitus, is used for so many
different disorders. This hampers both understanding of the
pathophysiology of tinnitus and the treatment because it implies that
it is possible to find _the_ cause of tinnitus and _the_ treatment for
tinnitus.
He goes on to say:
Disorders of the vestibular system was earlier in the same category,
but the introduction of specific names such as benign positional
paroxysmal nystagmus (BPPN) and disabling positional vertigo (DPV) has
greatly improved treatment and understanding of the causes of various
symptoms from the vestibular system.
In related news, some Irish teenagers have gotten a 99% cure rate by
playing to tinnitus sufferers a "low hum [that] might straighten out
those bent cochlear hairs"
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=teen-inventors-fight-tinnitus-09-09-28
Didier
Didier A Depireux depireux@xxxxxxxxx
Inst. for Systems Research http://theearlab.org
School of Engineering Ph: 410-925-6546
U Md College Park MD 20742 USA
Adjunct, BioEngineering
On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 7:14 PM, Kevin Austin <kevin.austin@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> From the BBC:
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8287791.stm
>
>
> Best
>
> Kevin
>