Subject: Re: Technique can pinpoint tinnitus From: Didier Depireux <depireux@xxxxxxxx> Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 14:30:39 -0400 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>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@xxxxxxxx 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@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > From the BBC: > > http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8287791.stm > > > Best > > Kevin >