Tuning out the noise: Limbic-auditory interactions in tinnitus
By Josef P. Rauschecker, Amber M. Leaver, Mark Mühlau. Neuron, 2010
722 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Tinnitus, the most common auditory disorder, affects about 40 million people in the United States alone, and its incidence is rising due to an aging population and increasing noise exposure. Although several approaches for the alleviation of tinnitus exist, there is as of yet no cure. The present article proposes a testable model for tinnitus that is grounded in recent findings from human imaging and focuses on brain areas in cortex, thalamus, and ventral striatum. Limbic and auditory brain areas are thought to interact at the thalamic level. While a tinnitus signal originates from lesion-induced plasticity of the auditory pathways, it can be tuned out by feedback connections from limbic regions, which block the tinnitus signal from reaching auditory cortex. If the limbic regions are compromised, this “noise-cancellation” mechanism breaks down, and chronic tinnitus results. Hopefully, this model will ultimately enable the development of effective treatment.
Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Neurology, Sensory Systems
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/37681f4bb648493a4498dde491a1216b79ebbaf9
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Citations in the corpus
- Brain Mechanisms Supporting Modulation of Pain by Mindfulness Meditation (2011, positive): “Projections from the PFC contact TRNGAB Aergic neurons, which in turn modulate sensory nuclei of the thalamus, and thereby influence the transmission of subsequent sensory information to the cortex in a context dependent manner (Sherman, 2001; Rauschecker et al., 2010).”
- Tinnitus with a Normal Audiogram: Physiological Evidence for Hidden Hearing Loss and Computational Model (2011, background): “Tothisend,tinnituspatients withapparentlynormalhearing(Barneaetal.,1990;Sanchezet al.,2005)representachallengetomodelsoftinnitusgeneration thatrelyoncompromisedcochlearfunctiontoelicithyperactiv-ityinbrainstructures(SchaetteandKempter,2006;Parraand Pearlmutter,2007;Kaltenbach,2010;Rauscheckeretal.,2”
- Phantom percepts: Tinnitus and pain as persisting aversive memory networks (2011, background): “Structural deficits have also been observed in the sgACC/ nucleus accumbens area (sgACC/Nac) and, on the basis of these findings, it has been postulated that tinnitus is the result of a deficient sensory attentional gating mechanism, originating in the sgACC/ Nac and acting on the reticular thalamic”