The Ringing in your ears

The ringing in your ears, also called tinnitus, is caused by the lack of sound due to gradual hearing loss. This hearing loss can be caused by various factors, among them normal aging, loud-noise exposure, or an accident. The brain therefore is inclined to produce its own sounds to replace the frequencies that are missing in what the ear hears.
Tinnitus is the result when the brain’s limbic system (the part of the brain that deals with basic instincts and emotions) fails to keep this sounds from being processed by the auditory system! Around 40 million Americans currently suffer from this chronic annoyance, for which there is no known cure.
The researchers say that the absence of sound caused by hearing loss in certain frequencies, due to normal aging, loud-noise exposure, or to an accident, forces the brain to produce sounds to replace what is now missing. But when the brain's limbic system, which is involved in processing emotions and other functions, fails to stop these sounds from reaching conscious auditory processing, tinnitus results.
"We believe that a dysregulation of the limbic and auditory networks may be at the heart of chronic tinnitus," says the study's lead investigator, Josef P. Rauschecker, PhD, a neuroscientist. "A complete understanding and ultimate cure of tinnitus may depend on a detailed understanding of the nature and basis of this dysregulation."
Tinnitus isn't curable, although antidepressants appear to help some patients, as does the use of masking noise to diminish focus on the ringing sensations.
Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), the Georgetown researchers tested 22 volunteers, half of whom had been diagnosed with chronic tinnitus. They found that moderate hyperactivity was present in the primary and posterior auditory cortices of tinnitus patients, but that the nucleus accumbens exhibited the greatest degree of hyperactivity, specifically to sounds that were matched to frequencies lost in patients.
The nucleus accumbens is part of the corticostriatal circuit, which is involved in evaluation of reward, emotion, and aversiveness, says Rauschecker. "This suggests that the corticostriatal circuit is part of a general 'appraisal network' determining which sensations are important, and ultimately affecting how or whether those sensations are experienced," he says. "In this study, we provide evidence that these limbic structures, specifically the nucleus accumbens and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, do indeed differ in the brains of individuals with tinnitus."
Functional lapses in these same areas have also been implicated to altered mood states and to chronic pain. "Both of these conditions may also involve the inability to suppress unwanted sensory signals," Rauschecker says.
Based on their findings, the researchers argue that the key to understanding tinnitus lies in understanding how the auditory and limbic systems interact to influence perception -- be it sound, emotions, pain, etc.
Grant support was provided by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, the Tinnitus Research Consortium, the Tinnitus Research Initiative, and the Skirball Foundation.

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The above story is based on materials provided by Georgetown University Medical Center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.