So we do a behavioral study which is a very extensive battery trial
of tests to describe and characterize the patients' hearing loss and tinnitus
and this is the place where we do it. This is a sound attenuating chamber or in lay language
what you would call a sound-proof chamber, we can't really have a soundproof chamber,
but this can attenuate up to 55 decibels and we monitor the participant from outside.
They'll sit somewhere over here and we use these headphones we have behind me
and we run through all these tests. We do the standard hearing test and we do other
elaborate tests to characterize their hearing loss and tinnitus. There are different types
of tinnitus people can come up with, come up with different types of hearing loss. So
we do all that. We try to match the loudness of the sound and the hearing, we try to match
the pitch with the sound of hearing and that takes about 2 to 3 hours, for the tinnitus
subject it takes about 3 hours, so as you can see this is somewhat of a roomy booth
and this was on purpose. We installed it with bigger dimensions because we wanted the participants,
who tend to be older and elderly to be more comfortable as they are sitting in this room.
We also look at the anatomy of the brain so we are looking at the changes in grey matter
structures the size of it, the volume of it, if you have had hearing loss and chronic tinnitus.
The other things is, are the changes in the white matter tracks, are the connectivity
patterns changing? And we are finding that in our research that indeed the gray matter
structures are changing which are these cells and then the pathways are also changing because
you have hearing loss. But what is somewhat surprising in my research is that I'm
finding that hearing loss impacts these changes a lot more than tinnitus even. So that is
another puzzle that we want to continue to investigate as we go on and run more subjects.
We want to see how much of a contributory factor hearing loss is in this puzzle and
how much is just ringing in the ears. Because they are so... they go together all the
time. So 90% of the people with tinnitus have hearing loss. So we want to sort of delineate
the two, sort of dissociate them, differentiate them and see what is the contribution of one,
can we address that? If we address the hearing loss, how much of an impact does it have?
And then how best can we address tinnitus by itself.
We construct elaborate programs which mimic the hearing loss which mimic somebody having
tinnitus. So we started with off with having normal auditory processing and then we give
it hearing loss to the model, we give it tinnitus. And then we see what happens? How do things
change if you have sudden sensory deprivation, if you have a loss of hearing.
And how do you react to it, how does your brain now adjust to it?
Understanding this kind of diversity in population is the first step at getting therapies.
We have some ways of managing tinnitus. And some ways of alleviating the problems associated
with it but there is no cure for it. There is no pill you can take and two weeks later
there is no noise in your head. We don't have that, however we have therapies or anti-anxiety
or anti-depressant drugs which will help you manage it, which may help you feel a little
bit better about it but in some cases they are temporary and yet the noise does not necessarily go.
Right now what we find is that about 40% of
people with hearing loss get tinnitus and we do not know why? Why doesn't everybody with
hearing loss get tinnitus? What is the difference between the 40% and the other 60%. That is
one of the primary thrusts of my research is to find these differences. Once we find
these differences how can we use it in prevention, how can we better use it in developing therapies.
I have family members with tinnitus, so it will mean a tremendous amount to me because
then I'm alleviating their problems. Professionally it will mean a lot, on a larger
scale I am alleviating all the patients I see, all the subjects that sit and talk to
me for hours. Talking about four different sounds they are hearing and how it bothers
them. I want to be able to help them on that level. On a personal level I want to help
family members who have it.
So it helps on a number of levels.