Thanks to Babbel, a language learning  app, for supporting this SciShow video.

As a SciShow viewer, you can use our  link to grow your language skills with Babbel for up to 60% off with  a 20 day money-back guarantee. You might call it “ringing in the ears.” If you have it you might also  call it “a pain in the butt.” Doctors call it tinnitus, or  tinnitus, and right after that they usually add “and I’m afraid  there’s not much I can do about it.” You’re basically hearing a sound that isn’t there, which doesn’t lend itself to any  obvious treatment strategies.

Unless we could trick your brain  into not hearing a fake sound? No, really, that actually seems to work, and it could mean relief for  millions of people. Here’s how. [♪ INTRO] Tinnitus is the seemingly phantom perception  of various sounds, including ringing, roaring, or buzzing, when there  is nothing outside of the body creating sound waves that travel to the ear.

It’s more a set of symptoms than a disease per se, and what causes it in a particular  patient may not always be clear.   Tinnitus symptoms are thought to affect  at least 10% of the world’s population, and for some, those symptoms can  seriously affect quality of life. It often accompanies hearing  loss, and may be part of the progression of hearing loss, though  that varies from person to person. Contributing factors range  from occupational exposure to noise to head or neck injuries to too much earwax.

Certain folks may also have  a genetic predisposition contributing to their symptoms. But while we’re coming to a better  understanding of the causes, actual treatments have been tough to come by. Doctors have sometimes dismissed  patients with these symptoms, sometimes implying that it’s  all in the person’s head.

Which, technically correct, but  that still makes you a jerk. Even providers who do take tinnitus  seriously have had limited options to offer. These include a combination of  psychotherapy and sound therapies.

The psychotherapy was for the distress  that some people with tinnitus symptoms experience, not for reducing the actual noises. And the sound therapies that some  doctors have recommended so far are approved for other  conditions, not tinnitus itself. Meaning there’s very little  that’s been available to address the root cause of the symptoms.

So people with tinnitus have kind of  been on their own to deal with the sometimes debilitating toll on  concentration, memory, and sleep, which can trigger or worsen anxiety or depression. Though it has been described as a particularly  elusive set of symptoms to unravel, our understanding of tinnitus has improved. And it appears the key to  treatment may be in using senses in addition to hearing to hack people’s brains.

In the past decade or so, doctors and  researchers have increasingly noticed that some patients can modulate their tinnitus  by moving or applying pressure to their head, neck, face, or other parts that  don’t have to do directly with hearing. These people have what’s referred to  as somatosensory or somatic tinnitus. They’re not quite sure how  it all works, but basically, it’s like people can listen to another sense.

That sounds kind of unreal because, typically, we think of each of our senses as separate. Sight and touch, for instance,  have their own processes to convey information through their  different sensory organs to the brain. But our sensory systems are  more integrated than that.

It’s more like an interconnected  web that brings all the different kinds of information we can perceive  together and sends it to our brains. Knowing that patients could  sometimes improve their symptoms by crossing their own sensory  wires, researchers started chasing the idea as a lead to  better understanding of tinnitus. Several studies in the 2010s looked  at animals, including guinea pigs, who were exposed to excess  noise to induce tinnitus.

Their results suggested that  whatever causes tinnitus also causes changes to the strength and connection  between the cells in the brain stem. Eventually, scientists figured  out that a lot of this is going on in the dorsal cochlear nucleus, or DCN,  a layered structure in the brain stem. In mammals, this area is the first site  where inputs of sound that hit the ear come together with inputs of touch and other  bodily sensations in the head and neck.

Scientists still have a lot  to learn about this structure, but they know that the DCN doesn’t  only receive and convey these inputs. It also plays a key role in processing them. Those animal studies showed that  something was specifically happening in a part of the DCN called  the fusiform cell circuit.

This group of neurons is one of  the final sites in the DCN that processes inputs before sending  them on their way to be perceived. In animals with tinnitus, the fusiform cells had dialed up neural connections  and increased activity. Which seems like the source of the phantom noise.

Researchers at the University of Michigan  pulled all this together in a double-blind, randomized clinical trial involving  99 participants with somatic tinnitus. They published their results in the  journal JAMA Network Open in June of 2023. They hypothesized that a well-timed  combination of sound and touch could dial back that extra activity  in the fusiform cell circuit.

This would go further than  previous therapies and actually turn down the volume of the sounds  experienced by people with tinnitus. Trial participants wore a type of headset  dealio that delivered a combination of both sounds and vibrations using electrodes placed on the neck or head  for 30 minutes at a time. Participants in the control group received  only sounds, but everybody in the study got to trade places and be in the  treatment group part of the time Over half of the participants  receiving both vibrations and sounds showed a significant reduction in  the distress caused by symptoms, as well as the volume of the sounds.

Basically, this treatment  intentionally throws a wrench at the part of the brain that  coordinates sensory signals. While that doesn’t sound like  something you’d normally want to do, it was for a good reason and it worked  for more than half the participants! What’s even better is that  the treatment effect persisted even after participants were no longer  using the headset thingy every day.

The team at the University of Michigan  says that their results are promising and represent hope for people with tinnitus. Since this trial has concluded, the  researchers are keen to move quickly through the approval process  to get their device to market. So yeah, it goes to show that just because  something is all in someone's head, or somewhere between their  ears and brains in particular, that doesn't mean that it's not real.

Here's hoping that soon, instead of  patients having to just deal with tinnitus, doctors will be able to turn  down these frustrating sounds with some literal good vibes. If you’re looking for other ways to hack your  brain, you can try tricking yourself into learning an entirely new language by  just spending 10 minutes at a time on it. That’s how Babbel works.

You know, the  #1 language-learning app in the world. After three weeks, you could start speaking Norwegian or Portuguese or Indonesian. And after two months, you  could start speaking all three!

Imagine walking into any room in the world and being able to understand what people are saying. Babbel sets you on your way to  actually having that super power. And as a SciShow viewer, you can get up to 60% off when you sign up using the  link in the description below.

You can choose from different subscriptions,  including a lifetime subscription. Babbel also offers live classes and you can get 2 free classes with your subscription. Thanks to Babbel for  supporting this SciShow video! [♪ OUTRO]