The first step is to learn about tinnitus. People with tinnitus hear most natural sounds normally, and tinnitus will not make you deaf. We are learning more about causes of tinnitus every day, and about how it is generated by the brain. Often we are less disturbed by mysterious things, when we understand them better. Helping readers understand tinnitus is one aim of this blog.

Another useful step is to get on with living despite your tinnitus. I know, this seems like shallow and ignorant advice. But it isn’t. I have tinnitus myself, so I know where many readers of this blog will have been sometime during their tinnitus. This advice is not always easy to follow. However, our awareness of tinnitus tends to decrease when we are occupied with other activities whether those activities be work, enjoyment, or study. Don’t let tinnitus rule your life.

This part is a little technical, and could be modified as scientific research continues. However current findings support the following explanation.

Although hearing loss is likely the main factor leading to tinnitus, the sound of tinnitus is not generated in the ear but by changes that occur in the brain when auditory neurons lose their input from the ear.

When the ear is damaged, activity in nerve fibers connecting the ear to the brain decreases. But neural activity in the brain itself actually increases. In part we believe this happens because the brain has adaptive mechanisms that increase the gain on auditory neurons when input to them is decreased. This adaptation is called “homeostatic plasticity”. Another reason is that input from the ear has inhibitory as well as excitatory effects on neurons. Overall, the effect of inhibition is stronger than the effect of excitation. Thus when the brain loses its input from the ear, the balance of inhibition and excitation is shifted toward excitation.

Persisting tinnitus is usually associated with some degree of hearing loss. Older people are more likely to be affected, because hearing ability often diminishes with aging, especially for higher sound frequencies (this is called presbycusis). But young people can experience tinnitus, too, perhaps increasingly so, because it is easy to damage our ears with wearable sound devices in our electronic age.

It is important to understand that tinnitus has two components. The first component is the actual tinnitus sound itself. In persisting cases, this sound is difficult to eliminate although research toward a cure is constantly ongoing in many laboratories around the world, and gives reason for hope.

The second component is our distress reaction to the tinnitus sound, which may include (especially in new cases of tinnitus) anxiety, sleeplessness, and even despair, all of which are completely understandable. The good news is that this component of tinnitus is highly treatable. And this component may be the most important part.

In new cases tinnitus may subside over weeks, to the point that it may not be terribly noticeable. This can be true even of tinnitus first diagnosed and associated with sensorineural hearing loss measured by a hearing test.

In the latter case, tinnitus may gradually return years later, as the aging process begins to affect hearing.

Most people experiencing persisting tinnitus report variations in loudness over the day or even over weeks. Fatigue and stress tend to make tinnitus louder.

We have established this website in the belief that adaptation to tinnitus can be assisted by knowledge of how tinnitus is generated by the brain. Many people suffering from tinnitus take comfort in knowing that the scientific community takes the challenge of tinnitus very seriously, and is working to assist those coping with this condition. You can click here to see some of the members of our team, but as we have said, many other researchers are working to solve the problem of tinnitus, too.

This website also contains hot links to several major organizations that offer practical advice for people coping with tinnitus. A library of publications contains recent scientific and non-technical articles in the form of pdf files that viewer can download for their personal use. We update this library on a regular basis.

Hearing impairment is a major cause of tinnitus, but it is not the only cause. Some cases of tinnitus (temporary or “acute” tinnitus) are caused by inflammatory processes that affect the ear (for example, ear infections or Meniere’s disease). Acute tinnitus may also be induced by temporary injuries to receptor organs in the inner ear (“hair” cells of the cochlea) that are caused by brief exposure to loud sounds. Tinnitus in these cases may disappear over a period of weeks as the ear heals itself or with medical treatment. Other cases may be caused by pathology in small bones found in the middle ear that can be corrected by surgery. It is important to be assessed by an otologist or ear-nose-throat (ENT) physician to assess medical causes which may be treatable.

Tinnitus (persistent ringing of the ears in the absence of external sound) is experienced to some degree by approximately 5-10 % of the population. In about 1% of the population the sound is sufficiently loud to affect quality of life. Some cases of tinnitus are related to medical conditions that can be evaluated by a physician. However, most cases are not caused by medical disease but are associated with sensorineural hearing loss produced by noise exposure, injury, or the aging process.