Tinnitus is a relatively common occurrence. According to statistics, about 17% of the world’s population has suffered from tinnitus at one time or another. The vast majority of people with tinnitus simply feel a very soft sound coming from themselves that does not affect their normal lives. For this reason, tinnitus has been considered a symptom rather than a disease. However, about 4% of people suffer from tinnitus to varying degrees, and they manifest it as nervousness and insomnia until they are unable to live a normal life. With the increase in industrialization, the acceleration of the pace of life and the increase in mental burden, the incidence of tinnitus is on a significant rise. Vicious Cycle – Tinnitus Tinnitus is a vicious cycle characterized by a variety of sound perceptions that seem to originate in the ear, but without a corresponding external sound source. This means that the patient continues to hear annoying sounds without a corresponding stimulus. Some people focus their attention on these sounds and are unable to ignore them, to the point of increasing attention. False alarms Tinnitus can take many forms,
It is the medical term for the perception of sound without hearing it, or “malignant sound”. This means that the patient is constantly hearing annoying sounds, but there is no corresponding stimulus. These sounds are often described by the patient as ringing, beeping, buzzing, and yelling. These sounds can force themselves to become the patient’s primary auditory perception and can significantly affect the patient’s work and life, affecting the patient’s quality of life. How Tinnitus Begins There are many indications that in most cases, tinnitus does originate in the inner ear, the cochlea. In an increasingly noisy society, there is always some occasional misinformation that travels through the auditory pathway to the brain, triggering a feedback loop in the brain for sound perception. If this misinformation is transient, this loop can be terminated as quickly as it started. Most people are actually aware of this transient, self-limiting tinnitus. On the other hand, if the misinformation persists and causes alertness at a higher level, it continues to trigger a sensory neural loop through an intrinsic feedback mechanism, at which point the misinformation takes on a life of its own and persists after the original acoustic signal has ceased to be input. Eventually, tinnitus becomes a phenomenon that exists only in the brain, a “central sound”. Scientists can now prove that this is the real mechanism of tinnitus. The persistence of background sounds If any hearing person is locked in a soundproof room, he will experience tinnitus like this. From this fact we can assume that tinnitus is actually a manifestation of some form of basic activity of the auditory system, which is at such a low level that we do not normally feel it. It is only when tinnitus captures our auditory attention that it becomes a problem. Tinnitus is not a disease Chronic tinnitus is not an ear disease, but an abnormality in the brain’s perception of sound. Therefore, the goal of modern treatment is to block the patient’s perception of this annoying sound and to restore the auditory system to its normal level of concentration on the perception of external sounds. This means that the patient’s attention is focused on the external sound rather than on the tinnitus. This is now a practical goal that can be achieved through a combination of modern treatment methods and hearing technology improvement.