Moffat G, Adjout K, Gallego S, Thai-Van H, Collet L, Noreña A J
Laboratoire de neurobiologie intégrative et adaptative, UMR CNRS 6149, 3 Place Victor Hugo, Marseille, F-13331 Cedex 03, France.
Hear Res. 2009 Aug;254(1-2):82-91. doi: 10.1016/j.heares.2009.04.016. Epub 2009 May 3.
Restoration of auditory input through the use of hearing aids has been proposed as a potentially important means of altering tinnitus among those tinnitus sufferers who experience significant sensorineural hearing loss. In animal models of neural plasticity induced by noise trauma, high-frequency stimulation in deafferented regions of the auditory spectrum has been shown to modulate cortical reorganization after hearing loss, a result which suggests that the neural basis of tinnitus is subject to interference by acoustic stimulation. This study drew on deafferentation models to investigate the effect of hearing aids on the psychoacoustic properties of the tinnitus sensation, using both conventional amplification and high-bandwidth amplification regimes. The tinnitus percept was affected only weakly in the conventional amplification group, and was not at all affected in the high-bandwidth group. The changes observed under conventional, low-to-medium frequency amplification may indicate that the perceptual characteristics of tinnitus depend on the pattern of sensory inputs - notably a contrast in activity between adjacent central auditory regions of more and less afferent activity - while the absence of modifications in the high-bandwidth amplification group suggests limit on the tractability of the tinnitus percept. This limit to the malleability of the tinnitus percept may arise from either the extent of hearing deficits or the duration and robustness of the neuroplastic changes that originally give rise to tinnitus.
对于那些患有严重感音神经性听力损失的耳鸣患者，通过使用助听器恢复听觉输入已被提议作为改变耳鸣的一种潜在重要手段。在噪声创伤诱导的神经可塑性动物模型中，已表明在听觉频谱的去传入区域进行高频刺激可调节听力损失后的皮质重组，这一结果表明耳鸣的神经基础会受到声刺激的干扰。本研究利用去传入模型，采用传统放大和高带宽放大方案，研究助听器对耳鸣感觉心理声学特性的影响。在传统放大组中，耳鸣感知仅受到微弱影响，而在高带宽组中则完全没有受到影响。在传统的低至中频放大下观察到的变化可能表明，耳鸣的感知特征取决于感觉输入模式——特别是传入活动或多或少的相邻中央听觉区域之间活动的对比——而高带宽放大组中没有变化表明耳鸣感知的可处理性存在限制。耳鸣感知可塑性的这种限制可能源于听力缺陷的程度，或者最初引起耳鸣的神经可塑性变化的持续时间和强度。
