Electroencephalographic evaluation of acoustic therapies for the treatment of chronic and refractory tinnitus

Abstract

BackgroundTo date, a large number of acoustic therapies have been applied to treat tinnitus. The effect that produces those auditory stimuli is, however, not well understood yet. Furthermore, the conventional clinical protocol is based on a trial-error procedure, and there is not a formal and adequate treatment follow-up. At present, the only way to evaluate acoustic therapies is by means of subjective methods such as analog visual scale and ad-hoc questionnaires.MethodsThis protocol seeks to establish an objective methodology to treat tinnitus with acoustic therapies based on electroencephalographic (EEG) activity evaluation. On the hypothesis that acoustic therapies should produce perceptual and cognitive changes at a cortical level, it is proposed to examine neural electrical activity of patients suffering from refractory and chronic tinnitus in four different stages: at the beginning of the experiment, at one week of treatment, at five weeks of treatment, and at eight weeks of treatment. Four of the most efficient acoustic therapies found at the moment are considered: retraining, auditory discrimination, enriched acoustic environment, and binaural.DiscussionEEG has become a standard brain imaging tool to quantify and qualify neural oscillations, which are basically spatial, temporal, and spectral patterns associated with particular perceptual, cognitive, motor and emotional processes. Neural oscillations have been traditionally studied on the basis of event-related experiments, where time-locked and phase-locked responses (i.e., event-related potentials) along with time-locked but not necessary phase-locked responses (i.e., event-related (de) synchronization) have been essentially estimated. Both potentials and levels of synchronization related to auditory stimuli are herein proposed to assess the effect of acoustic therapies.Trial registrationRegistration Number: ISRCTN14553550. ISRCTN Registry: BioMed Central. Date of Registration: October 31st, 2017.

Correlation Analysis of EEG Brain Network With Modulated Acoustic Stimulation for Chronic Tinnitus Patients

“…Suppression of the tinnitus, which is the reduction or disappearance of the tinnitus perception and might last from a few seconds to days, maybe achieved if neuroplastic changes are produced [12], [13]. Acoustic stimulation is one of the most relevant tinnitus therapies and helps relieve the painful feeling of chronic tinnitus [14]. However, though the THI scale is widely used to evaluate the tinnitus degree of patients, it is largely influenced by the patient's subjective judgment, and the reliable metrics to objectively evaluate the tinnitus recovery degree is still lacked, which is mainly due This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.…”

Evaluación de Terapias Acústicas en Pacientes con Acúfeno: Análisis de Conectividad en Potenciales Relacionados a Eventos

“…Se utilizó la base de datos generada por [3], la cual cuenta con registros de EEG adquiridos en pacientes con acúfeno y sujetos sanos que recibieron una terapia acústica y sonido relajante, respectivamente, para el tratamiento de su acúfeno y evaluar las terapias utilizadas. Además, algunos pacientes con acúfeno recibieron como terapia el sonido relajante, esto para confirmar que las terapias utilizadas generaron un cambio en la condición de los pacientes debido a éstas y descartar el efecto placebo.…”

“…Los detalles técnicos de adquisición de las señales de EEG de la base de datos pueden ser consultados en [3]. En donde se utilizaron 16 canales (Fp1, Fp2, F7, F3, Fz, F4, F8, T7, C3, C4, T8, P7, Pz, P8, O1 y O2), además de los canales Cz y A1 como los electrodos para la referencia y tierra del sistema, respectivamente.…”

“…El acúfeno es un padecimiento descrito como la percepción de un sonido (similar al tono de un silbido, campana o zumbido), en ausencia de una fuente externa que lo esté generando [1,2,3]. Aproximadamente del 5-17% de la población mundial padece de un grado de acúfeno [4].…”

“…Aproximadamente del 5-17% de la población mundial padece de un grado de acúfeno [4]. Las principales causas asociadas a la generación de este padecimiento son debido a lesiones en la cóclea, pérdida súbita de la audición, administración de medicamentos ototóxicos, problemas neurovasculares, factores emocionales y angustia, traumatismos craneales, exposición a ruidos intensos y el envejecimiento [3,5,6].…”