Around 5 percent of New Zealanders experience an unexplained ringing in one or both ears known as tinnitus.
For many, the condition is not a huge problem but a small group of people find it so distressing their quality of life is affected.
Now, a team of University of Auckland audiologists hope to provide some relief from tinnitus via a therapeutic app which trains the brain to 'de-focus' on its sounds.
In a recent trial, many sufferers experienced a meaningful improvement from the app and some even found it life-changing, says Dr Grant Searchfield.
Photo: Karolina Grabowska / Pexels
Tinnitus usually begins with hearing damage and the experience of it is very different from person to person, Dr Searchfield tells Karyn Hay.
"Some people will hear cicadas, others wind sounds, others will hear a single high-pitched screaming sound."
Often people hear it all of a sudden, such as one of his clients who thought the sound was a cicada till he went out in his boat.
"It was only when he was out in his little tinnie in the middle of the harbour that he realised there weren't any cicadas there but that's what he was hearing."
Dr Searchfield's team has found a 'polytherapeutic' approach to tinnitus via an app which combines a personalised treatment plan, low-level 3D sound and games designed to help people ignore the sound is what works best.
"We think that we're on the right track with an app sort of therapy - with some clinician involvement, as well - and a 12-week treatment period."
Their therapeutic approach to tinnitus consists of three components, he says - relief, relaxation and retraining.
"The relief is through the use of background sounds to give the individual some sense of control, the relaxation is a combination of guided exercises like breathing as well as some good information. The retraining involves complex sounds with 3D elements and training games which reward people for listening to sounds unrelated to tinnitus and punish them for listening to their tinnitus."
Going up a level in the game requires people to get better at listening to sounds other than their tinnitus, Dr Searchfield says.
"Through this process of reward and punishment, attention and refocusing we're actually training the brain. Our studies looking at brain function have shown we're able to rewire some of the networks underpinning tinnitus perception."
Trying to train people to defocus on tinnitus and refocus on other sounds is a critical part of the treatment, he says.
"A person with tinnitus who listens to [the tinnitus] becomes very good at hearing it. They listen to it more, they become better at hearing it, so over time, other sounds don't compete with it as well.
"What we really want to do is be able to reverse that process and active training using games is a great way of doing that."
Hearing is a "survival sense" humans have in order to detect potential dangers in our environment, and as a result, some people's brains go on high alert in response to tinnitus, Dr Searchfield says.
"When we perceive something in our head or ears and we don't know what's causing it, if we're a little bit worried about it that gets the brain going and the brain really starts focusing in on the tinnitus."
The reason some people are better able to just cope with tinnitus is that their defensive survival mechanism doesn't kick in, he says.
The new app helps people relax with the sounds by understanding what tinnitus is and what it's not.
"If you understand tinnitus you're on a good pathway to actually defeating it."
Dr Searchfield says the University of Auckland has had a huge amount of interest in their next trial of a new improved version of the app, which they hope will be clinically available in around six months.
