Tinnitus is a sound heard in the ear or brain which has no external source. Around 1 in 7 adults in the UK live with tinnitus. It can have a severe impact on someone’s quality of life, causing anger, frustration, problems sleeping, depression and anxiety.
There is no cure or long term treatments for this condition. We want to develop better treatments so that we can silence tinnitus permanently.
Max, who has tinnitus:
I woke up one day and had a constant, high-pitched noise in my head … I started to feel some dizziness, even when I was sitting or lying down; feeling a bit seasick, a bit ‘off’. Even though [researchers] can’t predict if something they’re developing will work as a treatment or not, at least we know we’re not alone and there is work going into it.”
Our impact in silencing tinnitus
What we’ve done
We still don’t fully understand what happens in the inner ear and brain when someone has tinnitus. Through our funding, researchers have discovered that noise damage to the inner ear changes the activity in the parts of the brain involved in hearing, causing them to become hyperactive. One of these areas is the inferior colliculus, which is involved in processing sound information from the inner ear.
Our research showed that the inferior colliculus acts like a volume control, boosting weak sound signals and reducing strong signals. If cells of the inner ear are damaged by loud noise, and send less information to the brain than usual, the brain ‘turns up’ the volume in response, becoming hyperactive.
The ‘volume’ has been turned up for people with tinnitus, increasing their sensitivity to sound. This could explain why people with tinnitus hear sound that isn’t there.
Further research we funded at the University of Western Australia led by Dr Helmy Mulders showed that tinnitus seems to have two stages of development – an early stage, where attempts to prevent the condition are made, and a later stage, when tinnitus has become permanently established in the brain. Other research groups are building on these findings to further our understanding and develop treatments.
Professor Peter McNaughton, tinnitus researcher at King’s College London:
“Thanks to RNID funding, we have been able to investigate the idea that tinnitus may have its origin in excess activity in the nerves of the inner ear. There is still a long way to go before treatments could reach human patients, but this is a very promising start.”
What we’re doing now
We’re currently funding two studies to see if non-invasive brain stimulation can impact tinnitus. Researchers at Flinders University in Australia, led by Professor Raj Shekhawat, are testing whether a type of brain stimulation called High-Definition transcranial direct current stimulation (or HD-tDCS) can suppress tinnitus over a long period of time, and not just while the stimulation is occurring.
Their results will help us understand if this method can effectively treat tinnitus. We’re also funding researchers at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, led by Professor Sven Vanneste, to test their treatment. It aims to re-train the brain of someone with tinnitus so they don’t ‘hear’ it anymore.
This involves listening training, where the person is asked to pay attention to sounds that aren’t their tinnitus (which distracts them from it). The researchers combine this with a type of electrical brain stimulation that is thought to promote learning and memory creation. By combining these two methods, the brain stimulation will hopefully reinforce the learning from the listening training, creating long lasting suppression of tinnitus.
