Dear all,I am a computer scientist/engineer working on MIR. As such, I'm definitely not an expert in this topic, but I suffer by bilateral tinnitus from the age of my first memories.
I'm following this discussion since the beginning because I've experienced something similar to what Brian describes. Precisely, I've found that "listening to my tinnitus" can reduce its perceived loudness while doing autogenic training.
In my case, I work in this way: * first, I achieve my usual autogenic state using the standard exercises* I start listening to my tinnitus, and this action usually makes it louder, in the same way I concentrate on other parts of the body in the "weight" exercise * I start trying to make it softer, exactly as I do to make my hands warm: "imagining" it softer actually makes it so
I have not noticed a long-term reduction, but at least I can go to sleep without almost hearing it. Maybe such phenomenon can be explained with the modified blood micro-circulation, as for the "weight" sensation? Since autogenic training can have long-term effects, it can be that in some cases it has beneficial effects for the tinnitus too.
As I said, I'm not an expert and, from what I read around, mindfullness and autogenic training are already used for tinnitus therapies. I just wanted to describe what I do to compare it with Brian's method and see if there are similarities.
Greetings, f On 20/08/21 07:49, PIerre DIVENYI wrote:
Fatima, Brian,I don’t think you are talking about the same thing. Brian’s proposal can’t be considered a varietal of mind-body training. It is sensory awareness of an individual acoustic object, if this description fits Brian’s tinnitus. Although, as he says, it’s not “tonal,” it has tonal components. My suggestion is to try to match the pitch of one or several of the components and even write it down. If it is pulsating, identify its rhythm and, again, write it down. Since this is nothing else but a stimulus-less auditory object matching psychoacoustic task, it could also lead to identifying its properties and its night-by-night variability. And doing this experiment would not take away your observation that awareness of the auditory properties of the tinnitus makes it less annoying.My two-penny thoughts inspired by 50 years in bed with psychoacoustics. Pierre Sent from my autocorrecting iPadOn Aug 19, 2021, at 21:50, Fatima Husain <husainf@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: Hi BrianI 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, FatimaOn Wed, Aug 18, 2021 at 11:57 PM Brian Gygi <bgygi@xxxxxxxxx <mailto: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 -- Fatima T. Husain, Ph.D. Professor, Dept. of Speech and Hearing Science and The Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and TechnologyFaculty Affiliate Neuroscience Program and Computational Science and EngineeringAuditory Cognitive Neuroscience Lab University of Illinois husainf@xxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:husainf@xxxxxxxxxxxx> www.acnlab.com <http://www.acnlab.com>