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| |  Source Of Ringing In The Ears Discovered ST. PAUL, MN -- January 22, 1998 -- The precise location in the brain that produces the sounds of tinnitus, a ringing in the ears that affects millions of people, has been identified. This marks a major step toward hope for an effective treatment. According to a study in this month’s Neurology, tinnitus patients also had abnormal links between their hearing systems and their brains' emotion control centres, as well as other brain transformations. "Using positron-emission tomography (PET), which measures blood flow in the brain, we were able to map brain regions that responded to variations in tinnitus loudness as seen by changes in blood flow,” said Alan Lockwood, MD, study co-author and professor of neurology, nuclear medicine and communicative disorders and sciences at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and the Buffalo Veterans Administration Medical Center. “Most people who suffer with tinnitus have at least partial hearing loss and often have damaged the cochlea in the inner ear. This led to speculations that tinnitus was due to abnormal discharges to the cochlea. "We found that tinnitus sensations experienced by our patients came from the central auditory system and not the cochlea." More than 10 percent of elderly adults report severe tinnitus and an additional 30 percent complain of mild tinnitus. Severe tinnitus is associated with depression, anxiety, sleep disruption and other symptoms that significantly impact patients' quality of life. "We also found an abnormal link between the auditory and limbic systems in our tinnitus patients,” Lockwood said. “Since the limbic system mediates emotions, this anomaly may explain why the phantom sounds of tinnitus are often so distressing to these patients." Changes within the tinnitus patients' auditory systems were also found, resulting in more extensive brain activity from external sounds. "Changes in brain pathways follow many forms of neural injury. We believe that these changes in the auditory circuits may determine the exact nature and severity of the resulting tinnitus." Lockwood recommended that some caution be taken in generalising these findings as the study participants had the unique ability to vary tinnitus loudness with specific facial movements. However, their symptoms and examinations were typical of tinnitus patients.
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