Acute effects and after-effects of acoustic coordinated reset neuromodulation in patients with chronic subjective tinnitus

Publication date: Available online 28 May 2017 Source:NeuroImage: Clinical Author(s): Ilya Adamchic, Timea Toth, Christian Hauptmann, Martin Walger, Berthold Langguth, Ingrid Klingmann, Peter Alexander Tass Chronic subjective tinnitus is an auditory phantom phenomenon characterized by abnormal neuronal synchrony in the central auditory system. As shown computationally, acoustic coordinated reset (CR) neuromodulation causes a long-lasting desynchronization of pathological synchrony by downregulating abnormal synaptic connectivity. In a previous proof of concept study acoustic CR neuromodulation, employing stimulation tone patterns tailored to the dominant tinnitus frequency, was compared to noisy CR-like stimulation, a CR version significantly detuned by sparing the tinnitus-related pitch range and including substantial random variability of the tone spacing on the frequency axis. Both stimulation protocols caused an acute relief as measured with visual analogue scale scores for tinnitus loudness (VAS-L) and annoyance (VAS-A) in the stimulation-ON condition (i.e. 15min after stimulation onset), but only acoustic CR neuromodulation had sustained long-lasting therapeutic effects after 12weeks of treatment as assessed with VAS-L, VAS-A scores and a tinnitus questionnaire (TQ) in the stimulation-OFF condition (i.e. with patients being off stimulation for at least 2.5h). To understand the source of the long-lasting therapeutic effects, we here study whether acoustic CR neu...
Source: NeuroImage: Clinical - Category: Radiology Source Type: research