Plasticity is a pitch discrimination game — that is, a game which tests and improves your ability to distinguish between similar sounds based on their frequency (pitch). You hear two sounds, which may have the same or different frequency (with 50-50 probability) and your job is to say whether they have the same frequency or different frequencies. At first, the differences are fairly obvious, but as you level up, they become smaller and smaller, which makes your job harder.
Plasticity can be a fun game to play (at least, if you believe some of my friends). In addition, it might be helpful if you want to improve your pitch discrimination skills – for example, if you’re a musician.
Plasticity is based on the Firefox Audio API and, as such, requires Firefox 4 or higher. Plasticity uses the HTML5 Web Audio API. It has been tested to work (at least) in recent versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari – including mobile devices (in the latest release).
I wrote Plasticity to treat my tinnitus (a phantom sound in my head). The idea was to re-wire the auditory cortex in my brain through repeated training in order to change my perception of the tinnitus sound. The name “Plasticity” refers to cortical plasticity – the ability of the cortex to reorganize in response to stimuli. Did Plasticity help my tinnitus? Well, I no longer have a tinnitus problem, though I am not sure to what extent Plasticity contributed to the improvement. If you have tinnitus (especially pure-tone tinnitus), you might as well give it a try. Here are some tips on how to use Plasticity for tinnitus.
Feedback request
If you’re using Plasticity for your tinnitus, don’t forget to post a comment below. I want to know how it went!
Why is there such a low upper limit on the frequency range? 10548 or something? Thanks.
Human hearing has a large dropoff in sensitivity above 10,000 Hz. Tones above that frequency sound very quiet and there’s not much you can do about it, even if you try to equalize perceived volume. This makes it difficult to tell the difference between sounds at those frequencies. If frequencies above 10,000 Hz were allowed, user performance would be very uneven. On an easy level, it would look like this: lots of easy questions interspersed with really hard ones (those above 10,000 Hz). I tested this and it doesn’t make for a very enjoyable experience.
In fact, unless you target a particular frequency, the limit is even lower: about 7900 Hz.
Is the 10,000 Hz limit a problem for you?
Tomaz,
Hi – I hope it is okay to get in touch with you. I have recently developed high tone T which is getting louder each day – probably due to the fact that I obsess about it all the time. Anyhow, no help from local doctor….and all he says is take higher dose of Xanax. I would like to use your plasticity game please. But I am a complete idiot when it comes to techno stuff. Please can you help and advise me how to do this – I am sure that there must be others like me out there who need techno help.
I am running a laptop with windows 7, vista home basic on it.
So I think that I have to run chrome yes?
What do I do once I have downloaded Chrome? Will my laptop work with plasticity using this vista home basic that I have. All the other stuff is just too techno for me but if you can please help me out (and probably others) to know what to do – if you prefer please feel free to reply to my email address so that you don’t have to clog up these comments pages with this – although I feel sure that there must be others in my postion.
Many many thanks and I really looking forward to hearing from you as soon as you have a spare moment – this T is driving me insane….thank you again Amanda
Tinnitus and insomnia kinda of go hand in hand when it comes to sleeping. Many people that suffer from ringing in the ears can’t sleep because the noise is distracting. If you want to be able to tackle to day correctly and easily, everyone needs a good night rest. My brother used a Sonorest or a noise machine to get to rest during many of those restless nights. Most of the other types, he would use Lipo Flavonoid tablets to make sure that his tinnitus treatment always stayed down and not as loud. He wasn’t thrilled with having to take a pill several times a day, but the magic that this put my brother in was amazing. He was always mad and lashing out at people, saying that he can’t deal with the noise and pain. He tells me if it wasn’t for Lipo and his noise machine he would have gone down a bad path. Look into modern medicine if you are suffering from tinnitus.
I want to share some of my tinnitus remedies with everyone. First try using earplugs all day, I use foam 32 dB plugs. You will be amazed at how much sound is stopped. Also stay away from alcohol and bad diet. These make tinnitus worse because all the blood flow to your head, at least alcohol does. Try working out consistently too, another thing for sleeping better is a supplement called crash. It’s natural and helps you to get a good deep sleep, it’s really for repairing your muscles for a faster recovery by helping you get good sleep. Another one I use every so often is Xanax. Everyone has their opinions on this but I’m not saying take 5 a day, take ONE when really needed before bed if your having a bad day with tinnitus. Also try to relax as much as possible and don’t stress on it, this makes it worse. Remind yourself that god blessed you and tinnitus is a bump in the road. It’s not life threatening. When you think it’s bad just remember some of the unfortunate people with diabetes or cancer, now that’s rough. Poking yourself with needles everyday until you pass on, or chemotherapy. Thank god for what you do have and don’t dwell on the small negative things, be grateful that your alive. I know it’s hard sometimes but you must not let tinnitus get the best of you. Also a nice hot bath or shower to help relax. I use medical Cannabis also, very easy to get in California. This helps get to sleep and can reduce anxiety about the ringing. If you don’t have one already try getting a girlfriend or boyfriend, the feel of someone there who really cares for you and loves you actually takes a lot of your shoulders and it’s a good feeling knowing that person has your back through the bad times. Sex also helps and makes you realize that there’s still a lot of pleasure and fun in life. Don’t let tinnitus beat you! I hope this helps everyone. Feel free to ask me any questions, I want to help anyway I can.
Sincerely, Paul B.
I just began with this. I can’t say much after two days, but it feels like there is a chance it can help my tinnitus.
Does this improve your hearing too, or to say how clear you intercept sounds?
It improves your ability to tell similar tones apart, so in a sense it improves your hearing. I haven’t noticed much difference in everyday life, but if you do music, you might.
Before I start, I was thinking about if the results can be shown more advances. Like summing up in what frequencies one scored the right/wrong answer.
I’m also having problem determining my frequency I don’t really understand how to do it. I run Firefox although nothing happens when I’m on the online tone generator, I tried the Java page, but what should I do? Play the piano and resemble my T with the Piano tone, to get my frequency?
Maybe it’s just the best to leave it as it is to have a variation as T might change from day to day.
Short background story, I have had T since 2000 from a noise trauma, standing near a very very loud nightclub speaker.
The T I developed in my right ear, only right ear, even possible that we all have infections when we are children and I always found my right ear as some how less good than my normal left, but nothing serious, but tended to be more fragile and because of the noise I got T.
The T was very low, never bothered me, I could only hear in at sleep if I concentrated hard.
Since 2000 I have been going to all sort of clubs, listening to loud headphone music etc etc and never got any problem,
Two months ago I put on the headphones and played music for 1-2 hours. This time I really played the music high, I later measured it to 98-103 dB.
After this I developed high pitch T. A tinnitus that I can could hear all the time even in medi noisy areas, as in the car/bus/train/school/work…
Now my troubles started and I started to be very careful and look for solutions to get rid of it.
I still am.
On October 23 I got this tinnitus. Two weeks later I started to use a ultra sound device, results? Well hard to say if it did anything, I’m still evaluating if it did, although I stopped using it after one month.
23 November I started with an homoeopathic medicine, that has helped me allot.
5 Dec I started putting eardrops in my ear using Noni extracts, evaluating.
15 Dec I started with Plasticity.
I’m living a healthy lifestyle, eating healthy, making sure I get all the natural vitamins, and believe Vit C is important.
So many things add up when working with tinnitus trying to get better, and also the background story is important, what kind of tinnitus one has, if it was from a noise trauma or health issues… how long have you had it before starting to battle it etc…
What I can say now after two months I feel much better, my tinnitus pitch has changed, it’s no longer strong, it’s no longer full of energy, sending out strong noises and most important what I felt after two months was that the first to second month testing listening the music through headphones or speakers the T raised in power and bother the music. Now when I listen to music I only hear to music even in the lowest settings.
To say something about Plasticity is I believe that just after five days that it helps allot.
After a session my T can dissapear sometimes more or less, for a minute. And can stay much lower up to 15 minuts…
I think it does something, it’s a helpfull tool, just like my other treatments, and I believe much patients have to be taken, and I’m going to play it for atleast one month, to see if it further betters my tinnitus.
My tinnitus today is far from what I want it to be, but also far from what it was two months ago, then I could hardly enjoy life, it was taking over my life and ruining it.
I will follow up after further progress.
Thanks for this and make sure to report back with more results. Good luck.
I’ve had T since the age of 12 (i’m 38 now) and can say that I got completely used to it for years and it never bothered me after a few months. Last year a friend developed T and in reassuring her I started to listen to my own T again, and sure enough it seemed to get louder. I’m now having to learn to live with it again which is proving stressful (but haven’t lost all hope!).
One thing I should mention is that my hearing has been described as excellent (back then and very recently), but I do have neck and jaw pain and was diagnosed with TMJ a couple of years ago. the problem is the medics I speak to still say there is nothing they can do, in contrast to the information I have found in that there is plenty that can be done and T has been known to subside after successful treatment for TMJ. I’m in the process of hunting down someone in my area who may be able to do something.
If any of you have T and no hearing loss I would approach someone trained in TMJ disorders and get them to do something to help you. Otherwise, just know it does become ‘your silence’ after a while. Hearing therapy also helped me alot when it got ‘louder’ last year.
Did you use any antibiotics? Antibiotics are ototoxic and can permanently worsen tinnitus or cause it for them that don’t have it, as many medicines break down the structure of the ear.
I am just starting with Plasticity and will let you know how it goes. I have T in both ears, multiple tones, so I don’t expect it will be as helpful as for those with one tone only.
Nicoli, is your T now in both ears, or still just one?
My T was always in one ear. I finished with the Plasticity after one month. It did not lower my T, but I can’t say for sure, it might have lowered it a bit. Yet I have the feeling I perceive it less now, I don’t think about it that much.
I might give it another try soon.
What really helped me was a homoeopathic medicine named “Ear Ringing Formula” from Newton Labs.
Great article! I suffered huge anxiety with the onset of my tinnitus, now I can sleep through and sometimes even find it soozing – lol. But when I have episodes of loud tinnitus even for a second, it freaks me out. Just remember and believe in power of your mind. I find it useful to say to yourself that the noise is phantom noise and it is not really there and another thing I found useful was the trick you called the Refrigerator Trick, it works.
Thanks for writing! I also find it soothing sometimes — it’s like a reminder that my brain is still working — my brain’s dial tone 🙂
Hi everyone, I am 52 and had T for 10 years now and can identify with the loop affect. I am in the loop now but reading this has helped me break the loop. When i used to go to bed i could hear my T quite bad but used a technique of letting my mind wander to a free place and imagine myself doing things like playing as a child running through the fields and things like that anything really that would take my mind off it. I can now sleep very well without any additional help. I also have a mindset that T in it`s self will not kill you not the actual noise so get used to it what is the worst that can happen. i also used to wear hearing aids which would help mask the T but when I took the aids out my t would get worse. Also if you can play music all round the house at low volume. That can help a great deal. Sound Enrichment it is called just google it.Well done to all the people involved.
thanks for your efforts.
http://discovermagazine.com/2010/oct/26-ringing-in-the-ears-goes-much-deeper#.Ug3OaNKTQVi
As the tinnitus actually affects the whole brain ( I can actually feel it, and it affects my memory and temper ) I feel that your training in combination with meditation will be more effective. When I meditate, ( vipassana ) it sometimes brings me relief, and I feel this is because it relaxes me a bit. Sometimes it does, but I’m yet to really go hard at it.
If you read the article above, I think Tinnitus needs a multi-pronged attack.
Again, thanks for reaching out and using your brilliance to help others.
They have done some studies with Tibetan monks in relation to plasticity
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-baksa/consciousness_b_1205909.html
I suspect it needs the emotional involvement. In Chinese medicine, depression is cited as a common cause of Tinnitus.
I developed tinnitus in both ears due to exposure to ambient noise pumped in through vents into an open office space work environment (The idea is to have the office noisy enough that you cant hear your colleagues). However unfortunately it was difficult to know it was noisy because the sounds sent through the vents were ambient white noise, hence I didn’t realize the damage being done. I was doing long work shift so that didn’t help.
This tool is very cool, however it would be good to know what frequencies you aren’t good at at least after say 5 turns, i.e. a report. Maybe then you could hone in on certain frequencies more easily.
I tried plasticity for a week a while ago but I dropped out, like your FAQ says, because of boredom. I know have the motivation to start again. But could you perhaps increase the upper limit? Using your tone generator I found my tinnitus is somewhere above 13,000 hz, so from what I can understand, I should benefit more from playing the game if the tones were set around that frequency, right?
Anyway, thanks a lot for making the game, hope it helps you and everyone else who comes by it!
Peter
Peter,
One problem is that speakers have difficulty producing very high-pitched sounds — you would have to really crank up the volume to be able to distinguish similar tones. But then the lower-pitched sounds would become unbearably loud. Plasticity tries to compensate for speaker (and ear) sensitivity, but for very high pitched sounds this becomes hard to do.
Another problem is that above a certain frequency, the ability to distinguish frequencies is much lower (in relative terms). A difference of 1/4 tone is very easy at 1,000 Hz, but very hard over 10,000 Hz. Plasticity doesn’t have any mechanism of correcting that difference.
If your tinnitus is around 13 kHz (you might want to check again, it’s easy to get wrong), I would recommend training around the 14917 Hz limit.
Regarding Tinnitus at those high frequencies….
My tinnitus first onset at 15,750 Hz. That’s the horizontal scan rate of now old-fashioned NTSC television. Picture tubes act as transducers, vibrating and emitting that 15.75k as sound from the stresses put on them by the scan electro-magnets.
I spent a 30 year career as a television engineer, most all before the advent of LCD or LED flatscreens, which do not have electromagnets to scan so do not vibrate or emit the 15.75k, which also ended with HDTV. Before bailing out of my career, in part because of the tinnitus, I measured the 15.75k sound at a work area concentrated with monitors, at about 95 DBM. That was a shocking level! Especially for 40 hours a week.
Thank goodness that is all obsolete technology now – I can turn on the TV again.
Hi,
Thanks for the online game, it is fun. Is there any way of adding a result function that tells the player which frequencies they got wrong?
cheers
Sonia
25 years ago, when I first heard the hissing sound in my left ear, I thought I was going to go mad, lose my hearing and never hear the voice of my grandchildren. My GP dismissed my condition by saying ‘there is no cure’. Leaving me desperate, I researched for help but there was very little in those days. After 4 desperate years of living with the condition, I got a part-time job. Being busy at work and with the children, I gradually forgot about my condition. I never noticed that the noise wasn’t there. After 12 years, the tinnitus returned with a vengeance perhaps due to an accident at work. I didn’t know how to adapt to this new situation, I was really stressed, after 7 months I went on holiday to the Far East. Upon my return to the UK, I couldn’t hear the tinnitus anymore. Last December I was in another stressful situation at home, sitting alone at home, I heard a slight sound in my left year. My brain started paying attention to the noise especially as the house was quiet and I had nothing to do to take up my free time. A few weeks later, I was in my vicious circle once again. I couldn’t sleep, went to my GP and once again was told, ‘there is no cure’. I thought after 25 years, the GP’s have no understanding of this condition, nor any sympathy. Yesterday I found this blog, what can I say, it’s been a life saver. Today, each time my brain concentrated on the damn noise, I’d slap myself of pinch my hand. Thank you, thank you for posting this blog and for everyone’s comments. Goes to show, stress can bring upon this condition, have some background noise at all times. Keep your brain busy with thoughts, so that the brain cannot focus on the noise.
Thank you so much for these tips and very helpful advice. I have just developed Tinnitus and hope to face this in a positive way. Regards, Justin
This is a very helpful tool, I use it and notice a difference. The severity of my tinnitus is high, on a scale of 1-10, I’m at a constant 8 or 9. I notice that after a few days of game playing I’m at a 4 or 6. Thank you!
For someone with tinnitus that is a ten, tinnitus is life threatening. Pure madness. Aliens inside my head. Different noises every day. Unable to be masked. Unable to put in the background. Then out of nowhere, it goes away for a day. But never overnight. Usually comes back while I’m falling asleep, seemingly louder than before. Has cost me my business, my retirement, my home. Will be the end of me. I heard it all. I’ve read it all. There is little or no hope.
I felt the same way when i first got tinnitus after listening to a loud band almost 30 yrs ago… the band was ‘Doug and the Slugs’. You WILL get used to it in a short period of time and paying attention to a healthy way of life will lead to recovery. One of the most helpful items are blood circulation supplements like cayenne pepper and ginko biloba. Eliminating pharmaceuticals is also recommended. Hang in there and KNOW that there’s a lot of folks dealing with the same issues. Definitely give Tomasz’
research a listen 🙂
Thankyou for your web pages. I will try the training.
Now in my 50’s I have had tinnitus for about 10 years. Loud clubs, played in & saw many bands, working in construction – drilling, hammering etc, riding & racing motorbikes. One day the post gig / post race meeting howl / whine became permanent. Like the whistle from a TV. I could live with it – although quiet moments in the countryside were not so for me – then last year was persuaded to go to a music festival & forgot my earplugs. Really not good. Since then the whine has been several x louder & very hard to ignore. The clock you mention in your comments reminds me of the clock in our front room when I was a kid. We grew up with it & friends would say “that clock is so loud” but we had stopped noticing it to the point that we had to concentrate to hear it! I hope somehow we can train our brains to not notice our tinnitus.
Hi!
My tinitus is pure sine waveform at 95Hz, any chance you can extend plasticity down to this frequency range?
Thanks and greetings from Croatia.
Tomaz,
Hi – I hope it is okay to get in touch with you. I am reposting this here as I think that i may have posted a few minutes ago in the wrong place so am putting it here, Please accept my apologies for any mistakes I have made.
I have recently developed high tone T which is getting louder each day – probably due to the fact that I obsess about it all the time. Anyhow, no help from local doctor….and all he says is take higher dose of Xanax. I would like to use your plasticity game please. But I am a complete idiot when it comes to techno stuff. Please can you help and advise me how to do this – I am sure that there must be others like me out there who need techno help.
I am running a laptop with windows 7, vista home basic on it.
So I think that I have to run chrome yes?
What do I do once I have downloaded Chrome? Will my laptop work with plasticity using this vista home basic that I have. All the other stuff is just too techno for me but if you can please help me out (and probably others) to know what to do – if you prefer please feel free to reply to my email address so that you don’t have to clog up these comments pages with this – although I feel sure that there must be others in my postion.
Many many thanks and I really looking forward to hearing from you as soon as you have a spare moment – this T is driving me insane….thank you again Amanda
By the way I am in rural france…..
Amanda,
You need either Firefox or Chrome to run Plasticity. You can install either browser on Vista Basic. After you install Firefox or Chrome, just open it and go to plasticity.szynalski.com.
ok tomasz – thank you for your reply. I downloaded chrome. But in the beginning it is telling me to calibrate and i dont see how to do that? Please help…so i started using your plasticiy without calibration…is that ok or do i need to calibrate and can you help me with this please? thank you
Just wanted to add – if I download Chrome will it interfere with my system – I know it says it wont but I downloaded chrome before and then had problems getting into some sites so I took it off. I am happy to reinstall but just need some expert IT guidance here please. Many thanks
Got a reply to my email to say confirm so have done that…many thanks
Tomasz, Cos it says drag the slider in steps 1 to 5, but i cannot see a slider to drag…Please help me thank you so much
Oops, that looks like a bug. I’ll try and fix it tomorrow.
thank you tomasz – i look forward to hearing from you as soon as you can and have a spare moment. Think you are an amazing person to do this for total strangers – thank you thank youi !!!!
Alright, it’s fixed now.
Thank you Tomasz,
I shall have a go tomorrow Monday sometime and let you know how things are and how it went…thank you again
amanda
by the way, just to understand, how often is one supposed to play this game….is it many times in the day or just once a day or what…for the moment I am doing it on speakers on the laptop but can I use earbuds instead for it? Would thatl be better – or is speakers better than buds? Just afraid to do more damage to my ears (which hopefully suddenly seem to be quietening down a bit today,,,,)
Amanda, check the FAQ page for more information. Laptop speakers don’t produce low frequencies very well — headphones are better.
You said you tinnitus got worse after attending a loud concert with a friend. Did you wear earplugs then?
No, I did not.
I recently developed tinnitus in my right ear. From the start it has sounded like white noise, like a distant waterfall, with no particular tonal emphasis. But last night I tried Plasticity for the first time, and a few hours later a new component was added to my tinnitus: a high, piercing tone somewhere above 10 Khz. It’s not that loud, but loud enough to be extremely bothersome. It’s interfering with my sleep quite a bit.
It could be a coincidence, but it would be a funny one. Is there anything I can do?
Sorry to hear that, but I can only offer the advice that I’ve already given on my blog: don’t think about it (mask if necessary) and it will go away. Plasticity (with the default settings) doesn’t go beyond 10 kHz, so I have no idea why you’d be hearing a > 10 kHz component. Anyway, the scientific hypothesis that Plasticity is based on is related to pure-tone (or narrowband) tinnitus, as this is the type of tinnitus that has by far the biggest body of research. I should probably make this clearer in the docs.
You say you don’t have a tinnitus problem anymore. Does that mean you don’t have it or you just got uses to it? And how long did you have tinnitus and what did you all do about?
I can still hear it occasionally, just like I can occasionally feel the pants on my legs.
Tomasz, I’m enjoying using this! If you don’t mind a feature request, I’d like to see a third button, labeled “What Tones?”
I could use that…
I know what you mean!!
Have used your game for a week and my tinnitus seems much improved. Dont know if it is real or a coincidence. My tinnitus has a strong emotional component to it but I think your game is helping. I cheated one time and I played the game with my two musician daughters and I scored over two million. Most of the time I score 40,000. What is a normal score in your experience?
Thanks for your report. Not sure what score qualifies as “normal”, as your scores depend on training. What’s a normal score in Tetris? In chess? Etc.
Fair enough answer. I will keep playing.
Hi Tomas: I’ve been suffering from pure tone tinnitus since more than a year now, although sometimes there are a few high pitched tones at the same time, something like a simplified fax machine sound.
I won’t go into details into my history, but sometimes it’s been hell and it’s changed my life (it has added to preexisting health issues, specially chronic pain and a physical disability, I can hardly walk using crutches). I just wanted to let you know that I think your plasticity game somehow helps – I’ve been using it for 20 min a day (10 minutes in the morning and 10 in the evening). Since I can’t measure and compare my own tinnitus (it’s hard to “remember” how it was 1 week ago or 1 month ago), I can’t say for sure that there has been such improvement, in fact, I still hear the sound. But sometimes it seems quieter, and it’s calling my attention less than before.
Previously I had been trying to listen to tones with the same frequency of my tinnitus, or a continuous sound that during 15 seconds goes from the lowest frequency to the highest I can hear, and back (like a siren). When I do that, the tinnitus goes away completely or almost, but the effect only lasts for a few seconds, then the tinnitus creeps back in.
What makes plasticity very different, or so I think, is the fact that it requieres an “active”listening, I have to make a mental effort. I think that makes all the difference, and I truly think that the plasticity theory makes sense. My tinnitus originated from a multiple medicine intoxication, but it has not gone away even after stopping to take the medicines, so I guess some kind of permanent change must have taken place somewhere in my brain. If that is true, one way to cure the tinnitus would be to “learn” to reverse this change. I also suspect that the sooner this therapy starts, the better the changes of avoiding this permanent change to settle in. But of course, I don’t know. I don’t even know if the problem is the sound itself, or the ability to hear some brain activity that maybe was already there but was not picked up as sound before. This tinnitus thing is a mistery to me.
Even if there’s really an improvement from using Plasticity, I don’t know how far it can continue, or if it would hold if I stopped using plasticity. Time will tell, but I wanted to thank you for creating it. I’ll report again if I feel like I can confirm the improvement some months from now.
Last, I wanted to suggest that you consider turning Plasticity into an android App, I would certainly pay for it because for some reason, I can’t use it in my smartphone browser (a Galaxy S5 – using firefox the sound is jerky instead of smooth, and using the built-in stock browser, it just crashes after a while, so I have to use my desktop computer every time). The app could be free for all frequencies and paid for the ability to use the custom frequencies option, or something like that. It’s just a suggestion, you probably have already thought about it.
Thanks a lot for all the information you provide in this page, and for the plasticity game.
Thank you for your report, very interesting!
Using a phone is perhaps not the best idea, since audio fidelity on phones is not great, even with headphones.
I just tested Plasticity on my Android phone (running Chrome) and it seems to work fine (other than the sound quality). I only played it for 2 minutes, though, perhaps not long enough to see the crash you described.
I’ve never made an Android app, so writing one would take me a long time.
Carlos
I definitely agree that the active part of it seems to make a difference. I’ve been using plasticity for just a week and it seems less intrusive.
From all of the reading I’ve done on neuroplasticity it seems that the brain needs an indicator or marker to know when to rewire. Just listening passively isn’t enough to do it in my opinion. You need to gamify it or get the brain to make a logic decision when you hear the sounds. Hence the need to push the brain into detecting the tone differences is what makes it stick.
In saying that, I wonder if there is a better mechanism than simply detecting whether tones or are the same or different?
Some ideas:
– Play three tones and get the listener to detect the up/down between them
– Play a tone and then have the listener slide a slider to what they think the same frequency is
– Make it all multiplayer so there is a sense of immediate competition
– Turn the sounds into distorted versions of their own voice or those of loved ones, to engage the emotional centres of the brain
These are just some ideas but overall I think the eventual treatment for tinnitus will settle on something that relies on active brain training to rewire the brain.
Cheers
Marc
I Received an iPod for my 56 birthday last august. Never had problems with ears before then . I tried it at decent level when I went to sleep about a week later I noticed a slight ear ache . Intuition told me it was the darn ear buds iPod causing it . so I stopped using it . I read manual and sure enough it gives a small warning . My husband then complained his one ear felt plugged up . He uses those things to exercise .I told him it was probably the darn things . He ignored my comment . In September I noticed a soft hum I thought it was a DVD player . Later I come to find out it was me. Well in October I had some stress family issues then December I had to work crazy retail holiday hours lots of pressure then one morning in Dec. I woke up to a loud tea kettle in my head. I take flavenoids for it now. Some days are good some bad . Stress seems to trigger mine. On bad days I have to come home and have everything be peace and quiet . just the tea kettle and me or whatever appliance or gadget is ringing in my head. Until I am calm . I read your blog and tried the plasticity for first time today . I will follow your directions and see how it goes. I appreciate all your info . Please write back with your thoughts and i can help others with this as well . Thank you.