TARGEAR-Targeting challenges of active ageing: innovative integrated strategies for the healing of agerelated hearing loss

A FP7-PEOPLE-IAPP project leaded by Dr. Isabel Varela Nieto, from the IIBm Albelrto Sols (CSIC). Our contribution to this project was related with tinnitus, an uncomfortable symptom affecting severely the quality of life to about 1-2 % of adults. Most cases of persistent tinnitus are associated with hearing loss (HL) so that a high prevalence of tinnitus in Cochlear Implant (CI) candidates can be expected. Sound therapy may suppress tinnitus by compensating for sensory deprivation, reversing maladaptive plasticity, or enhancing lateral inhibition. There is also evidence demonstrating that an Enriched Acoustic Environment (EAE) can reduce the impact from acoustic trauma, such as hair cell deterioration and tonotopic reorganization in the auditory cortex, possibly mitigating the tinnitus-causative spontaneous rate, synchrony and cortical reorganization.

We developed EAE stimuli consisting of a sequence of gammatones, presented to the patient at a fixed rate, each one with a random frequency within the hearing frequency band, and with amplitude proportional to the HL value at such frequency. The spectrum of each gammatone provides the human auditory filter at that frequency. The EAE, as it matches the amplitude of each gammatone to the HL, is customized for each patient. Furthermore, it drives selectively each part of the damaged cochlea by the corresponding auditory filter, so that it provide the most refined stimulus for the patient. The EAE sequence of gammatones is designed for each patient, starting for his particular HL curves, using a Graphical User Interface (GUI).