Re: [AUDITORY] Responses to "listening to your tinnitus"

[Fatima Husain <husainf@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Brian

I will attempt to answer. What you are describing seems like the "sounds and thoughts" meditation, which is one of the mindfulness-based cognitive training (MBCT) exercises, where the individual meditates on their body's sounds & external sounds, including their tinnitus (if they have it). We conducted an MBCT intervention for adults with bothersome tinnitus and found that a great majority were helped by an 8-week MBCT course. When we were designing the experiment, we were worried if this particular exercise would exacerbate someone's tinnitus and we gave directions to the instructors accordingly. But, we found that no one complained about listening to or being intensely aware of their tinnitus in this context. There have been several published reports of MBCT being useful and if they all did the standard MBCT, then it would include this type of meditation. Other psychology-based treatments may also include such meditation exercises. No published report, to my knowledge, has weighed in on the relative merits of different aspects of MBCT or similar plans. 

Hope this helps,

Fatima 

On Wed, Aug 18, 2021 at 11:57 PM Brian Gygi <bgygi@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hello, I received several responses to my post on "listening to your tinnitus" in which I described a method I had found that seemed to alleviate my tinnitus.  Unfortunately, all of the posts described methods in which an acoustic signal is present to the ear with frequencies that match (or mask) the tinnitus, which is different from what I was talking about.  

The method I was describing involved actually focusing on the tinnitus, not an auditory stimulus.  I can hear out some of the individual tones in my tinnitus, and I find when I do this the tinnitus seems to lessen in severity.

So, does anyone know of any work that that been done in this area?  

Thanks,

Brian Gygi

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Fatima T. Husain, Ph.D.
Professor, Dept. of Speech and Hearing Science and

The Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
Faculty Affiliate Neuroscience Program and Computational Science and Engineering
Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience Lab
University of Illinois
husainf@xxxxxxxxxxxx
www.acnlab.com