For tinnitus patients, music is in the spaces between the notes

Here are some fascinating findings on a potential therapy for treating the chronic ringing in the ears known as tinnitus. Researchers took each patient's favorite music and cut all notes corresponding to a range of frequencies centered on the patient's "ringing" frequency. The patients listened to their personalized music for 12 hours each week for a year, and experienced significant improvement in their tinnitus.

The idea behind the research is that tinnitus may be caused by reorganization of the auditory cortex of the brain as a result of noise exposure. (The auditory cortex perceives sound.) According to the researchers, the success of this therapy may be based on two mechanisms: The neurons responsible for the tinnitus are not being stimulated since their corresponding frequencies are absent from the music. Also, these neurons may be actively suppressed by neighboring auditory cortex neurons.

The research was published by PNAS, and the supporting information includes links to three movies with examples of "notched" music, or music in which a certain range of frequencies has been deleted. One movie is "target notched," meaning it is customized for the specific tinnitus frequency of the patient. A second is a placebo in that it has also been "notched," but in a range not centered on the patient's tinnitus frequency. The third movie plays the original audio for comparison (the Prelude to Bizet's Carmen, for my fellow music nerds).

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