Haab Lars, Lehser Caroline, Corona-Strauss Farah I, Bernarding Corinna, Seidler Harald, Hannemann Ronny, Strauss Daniel J
Systems Neuroscience and Neurotechnology UnitSaarland University Hospital, University of Applied Sciences66117HomburgGermany.
Key Numerics Medical Engineering GmbH66129SaarbrückenGermany.
IEEE J Transl Eng Health Med. 2019 Feb 28;7:1600109. doi: 10.1109/JTEHM.2019.2897570. eCollection 2019.
Recent work has shown that sharp spectral edges in acoustic stimuli might have advantageous effects in the treatment of tonal tinnitus. In the course of this paper, we evaluate the long-term effects of spectrally notched hearing aids on the subjective tinnitus distress. By merging recent experimental work with a computational tinnitus model, we modified the commercially available behind-the-ear hearing aids so that a frequency band of 0.5 octaves, centered on the patient's individual tinnitus frequency, was blocked out. Those hearing aids employ a steep notch filter that filters environmental sounds to suppress the tinnitus-related changes in neural firing by lateral inhibition. The computational model reveals a renormalization of pathologically increased neural response reliability and synchrony in response to spectrally modified input. The target group, fitted with spectrally notched hearing aids, was matched with a comparable control group, fitted with standard hearing aids of the same type but without a notch filter. We analyze the subjective self-assessment by tinnitus questionnaires, and we monitor the objective distress correlates in auditory evoked response phase data. Both, subjective and objective results show a noticeable trend of a larger therapeutic benefit for notched hearing correction.
近期研究表明，声学刺激中的尖锐频谱边缘可能对音调性耳鸣的治疗具有有益效果。在本文中，我们评估了频谱带凹口助听器对主观耳鸣困扰的长期影响。通过将近期的实验工作与耳鸣计算模型相结合，我们对市售的耳背式助听器进行了改装，使得以患者个体耳鸣频率为中心的0.5倍频程频段被阻隔。这些助听器采用陡峭的陷波滤波器，通过侧向抑制来过滤环境声音，以抑制与耳鸣相关的神经放电变化。计算模型显示，响应频谱修改后的输入，病理上增加的神经反应可靠性和同步性会重新归一化。佩戴频谱带凹口助听器的目标组与佩戴相同类型但无陷波滤波器的标准助听器的可比对照组进行匹配。我们通过耳鸣问卷分析主观自我评估，并监测听觉诱发反应相位数据中的客观困扰相关指标。主观和客观结果均显示，频谱带凹口听力矫正具有更显著的治疗益处趋势。
