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!
Thank you so much for such a useful blog.
Had tin for number of years and do find hearing problematic. It’s got bit worse lately, but because it’s brain-related I’m going to try hypnotherapy. Will let you know how I get on.
It got really bad a couple of weeks ago – to the point of me really panicking that this is how it was going to be and I couldn’t deal with it. I went to the Chiro to dismiss anything neck related, and that calmed it down a bit, but he was telling me that some recent studies have suggested it may be caused or exacerbated by excess salt. I have cut back and I do think it’s a bit quieter.
One of the biggest tin reductions came after I had a morning in the garden and was doubled over with a trowel most of the morning. Feeling very happy in the afternoon, I was shocked to realise my tin was almost gone. It came back gradually, but nothing like it was. I could have cried!
Will keep checking in for other suggestions and thanks again. BTW, pretty sure mine was caused as I was in a group for some years in the late 60s.
I think you should add a button for “I can’t hear any tones”. There were several times when I didn’t hear anything so I was just guessing, so my results weren’t very accurate.
Same advice from me.
Thank you!
It does help me!
Plasticity helps me listen in my tinnitus frequencies, now octave 8, on my left ear.
It also helps me to mask the frequencies,
I have changed masking frequency over time,
not sure anymore what octave it started, 6 i believe, but now it is only octave 8.
I still always have the (white noise – masking freq) on when I sit by the computer, which happens to be a lot.
I used Audacity to create white noise and bandstop filter.
I think my tinnitus is now hardly noticable even.
I have been a musician, but now I play chess for hobby, which also helps me focus.
Thanks for the report and congratulations!
It started in octave 7, though.
Hey can anyone help. I have been having panic attacks because of my tinnitus. Feels like I am losing my mind at times.
I didn’t sleep at all last night.
Feeling very low
Try blocking it with music or white noise (see https://mynoise.net/). Xanax also helps as a short-term solution.
Hi Tomasz,
I found your website by chance and it’s very interesting! Doing some speakers test I founded that record from 6000Hz and up were inaudible played with my amp and my headphone! I knew that I had tinnitus because as child I was able to hear at will the constant sound in my head, but I never have been annoyed by it! I can forget it completely!. I tried your tone generator and I was capable to catch something at 8000Hz and up but only increasing the volume and switching play-stop buton (In comparison my tinnitus was to loud! ).
I tried your application (between 4000 and ~8000) and in a couple of time
I was unable to ear any of the 2 speech but I had to choose between “Same” and “Different” perhaps a third button like “inaudible” because I choose one randomly (some time guessing well!).
Now I’m wondering what I’m missing when I listening music with my
high headphones!
Thanks
Regards
Jose
You can set the frequency range manually before you start.
Is there a way to know which ones on the test are wrong? The same tone (I think) I got consistently wrong even though it sounded the same. Its much lower than my tinnitus ringing. Im curious to know what it is!
After you get it wrong, you can check the frequency by pointing your mouse at the little “stair” indicator in the upper right corner.
I like your interactive tester. I do have tinnitus. My ears (or my brain) are like a cheap hifi amp from the 60s with a poor signal-to-noise ratio: I have a constant level of something like ‘white noise’. I had a preliminary audiology test that showed losses >25dB at frequencies over 5kHz. Despite that, I can function perfectly well as a musician and sound tech (have done that for 30 years). I still have a good ear for sound, and others recognise it, not just me. For example, when setting up live sound, I can consistently pick a ringing or feedback frequency within the octave, often closer than that. And the harshness that comes from too much in the 2kHz to 4kHz region. My ears are deficient, according to the tests, but others agree that I have a ‘good ear’, and I am 63 years old.
I am convinced that the brain has an inbuilt graphic equaliser and AGC: they do their best to compensate for my physical deficiencies, but not perfectly. I do have difficulty in noisy environments, for example, hearing a conversation in a noisy cheap restaurant where no attention has been paid to acoustics. When listening or watching TV with friends, I often find I want the volume considerably louder than they do.
Interesting discussion, thank you.
John,
Thank you for sharing your very interesting observations. I agree that the brain does a surprisingly good job of compensating for hearing damage. Tinnitus could be a side-effect of that compensation: as you try to amplify a weak signal, you obviously increase the noise. Let’s also suppose the amplification is not precise: it’s applied to a fairly large frequency band, not just the exact frequencies where hair cells are damaged. The result would be correct compensatory amplification of certain frequencies and overamplification of others. The latter could manifest as tinnitus.
(There’s research that shows hearing loss produces tinnitus below the frequency where hearing is impaired.)
Wow! You & me, brother. I’m near 68yo, and people ask me to do their sound often. I’m trying to retire from it, because my tinnitus makes me cringe at the thought of doing what I love to do anymore, so I’ve narrowed what I say yes to, to acoustic, percussion, but no drums (except outdoors), and any guitar/key/instrument amps turned into the stage from upfront, so I control the house.
I feel personally that I’ve lost my perspective, so I’m always asking people if it’s too loud/soft/tinny/dull, and they look at me like I’m nuts and tell me it’s just right, or even great. Then they ask me to come back and do it again the next time.
Our hearing is indeed adaptive. We all adapt to whatever environment we’re in, which quickly becomes the normal. I read an article on PA EQ years ago that changed the way I set up. The advice is – do NOT flatten your PA within the venue. If you run flat EQ in a tinny venue, the PA sounds out-of-place dull. And a flat EQ in a dulled venue sounds tinny to the people who have adapted to their environment. Flatten your PA outdoors, then only correct extreme anomalies indoors. Change the way I set up PA for the good forever.
That’s a lot of comments to read through so I’ll just ask “IF”:
>>> on the test screen require a next button because some of the tones
I cannot hear at all so “Same” “Different” and “Next Tone(s)” would be
helpful.
Thanks
Tinnitus, on an emotional level, comes from refusing to listen to your inner voice and your intuition. Make more decisions in your heart, and always listen to your inner voice, along with avoiding loud music and concerts, and you will find that over time, it will heal. Here is a poem that I hope you all enjoy:
Ringing in the ears
Can bring up many fears
And in some cases
Cause many tears
Because the gift of silence
often is not cherished
until the noisy pitch starts
and the quiet has perished
So let us restore hope
and pray that you can heal
start using this free tool
the results can be real
listen to your intuition
and follow your inner voice
always live in your heart
it will find the best choice
to move forward with your life
take it one day at a time
the plasticity tool helps too
and makes the sun shine 🙂
Hi,
My tinnitus goes up in volume when I use electrical equipment, computers, drive in a car etc and stays quite loud for awhile.
I thought I’d try Plasticity for fun and it immediately dropped the volume to the lower level it sometimes sits at. It was a pleasant surprise. Obviously it’s not a cure but it was nice to feel it drop. I’ll keep using it each day to see how I get on and will be giving this site to my local tinnitus group.
Thanks for the report – glad that it helped you somewhat!
Tomasz,
I just started here with trying to map my tinnitus, and will be pursuing the plasticity. I have one question, and a couple observations. I haven’t had time yet to read comments, so hope there’s no repetition, but you’ll know I’m not being led in my comments. I have a left-side tone around 2,800, and both sides have an array of steampipe-like steady whishing from about 4k and up.
Q: When doing the plasticity, I’ll call it an exercise rather than a test, is it a good idea to re-play tone pairs to make certain, or is this best done on a quick first reaction?
Observation on plasticity: What I’m finding quite often is that on the first play, some matched tones seem to go up or down, then on a replay, they go the other way, then with repeated plays, they finally match and stay steady. Is this my brain learning, or is this some sort of cortex-induced inertia from the previous tones?
Observation on tone matching: I’ll think my left-ear tone is obvious at the moment, so try matching, upon which I immediately lose track of my own tinnitus tone – it actually seems to slip into the background noise, and I can’t find an exact match. What’s going on there?
Thank you so much for these tools, and the hope that this brings. I’ll check back her, but feel free to email me if you can spare the time.
Joe
Hi Joe,
Thank you for your donation. I appreciate it.
About your first question, I think whatever helps you learn faster is best. I replay the tones a lot when I play the game.
I’m not sure I understand about the tones going the other way on a replay. Do you mean that it sounds like a rising interval on your first listen, but then it changes to a falling one? If so, that’s normal when the sounds are very similar in pitch.
Your tinnitus can slip into the background due to masking. When you hear similar tones, the brain will attenuate the tinnitus.
Hope this helps.
Yes, Tomasz, for matching tones on Plasticity, many at first impression rise or fall, then next play go the other way, and further repetitions show that clearly, they match.
Glad to hear it’s normal. Brains are funny things.
Brains, the most complex things in the known universe.
Hi Tomasz,
thank you so much for this tool! My Tinnitus got worse in March 2019. Working 2 month with your website helped me a lot. My Tinnitus (8500 Hz) is now only a quietly hiss. 🙂 I started in March with 5000 points, in May my Highscore was over 100.000 Points!
Hello and first, THANK YOU for putting this site up! Nice to do some hearing checks and so appreciate your interest in the tinnitus and Alzheimer’s therapeutic work.
On the Plasticity test, I wonder if you could add a selection besides Same and Different. Having moderate tinnitus and trying to see if audio therapy can help, I sometimes find I cannot hear the test tones at all (using the tinnitus target, where test tones go from an octave below to one above the target). When I see the page say I have to choose either the tones were same, or different, and I couldn’t even hear them, I’m not sure what to select. Maybe a “Didn’t hear” choice could be added so that users aren’t faced with just picking either existing choice randomly and possibly ending the round.
Anyway, again, thanks so much!
Thank you, Tomasz. I’ve been playing your plasticity game since March and it seems to be helping to reduce the volume of my tinnitus. I sent in a donation a few weeks ago to thank you! Thanks again!
Thank you, Debbie! Glad it’s doing something for you!
Thanks this is interesting.
I wonder whether it is better to train close tinnitus frequency or far off? I noticed that I am much better in discriminating sounds close to my tinnitus frequency (11 000hz) than I am at far off (lower frequencies). Since I like to unlearn the tinnitus sound it would suggest I should train far off tinnitus frequencies?
Not necessarily. You probably want to train neighboring frequencies, since they are physically close to your tinnitus frequency in your brain. If you choose a range that includes your tinnitus frequency, only a small percentage of tones (perhaps none) will actually hit your exact frequency (assuming you have pure-tone tinnitus). The vast majority will be in the neighborhood.
Tomasz,
would be nice if you could place in more payment methods. This would surely help with the funds inflow, so needed to keep this up and running!
I started my game today. We will see where it takes me.
Kacper
I just played plasticity for the first time and noticed that I never got (by the time I had lost) my choice wrong if it was a falling tone, only when it was a rising tone difference.
Do you have stats on the errors people make? is it just me? 🙂
Thanks for all your developments.
Interesting. I don’t have the stats to answer your question, though.
I think everyone has a white noise in his ears, only noticable in very quiet locations. A few months ago my “noise” suddenly started to get louder. After two weeks, a high pitched (ca. 13kHz) tone appeared in my right ear. It is intermittent, sometimes, and sometimes it’s a constant tone. Sometimes it disappears and symmetrical white noise remains.
I was not subject to loud music, any explosions oder bangs; I’m also not that stressed. Still, I have these noises…
While searching the web I found your page. I just ended up with 9,335,000 at Lvl 13 on the “sick” ear. Let’s see how it will work out, if there’s an improvement.
Thanks for your effort!
I played today for the first time, for like 5 minutes. Immediately after finishing, a new tone was added to my tinnitus. not gonna play again probably 😛
Both the tone generator and the game are very awesome! I have constant-tone tinnitus, but when using the generator I realized it isn’t a pure tone, more of a kind of mix? Like if a chain were constantly falling on cement, maybe… Or a very confusing chord I can’t seem to tease apart. Maybe working with the tools for a few days will shed some more light. Thanks for making them!
My tinnitusis is about 4000hz. I’m a little confused where to set the paramaters on the target tinnitus freq?
You can click the link labeled “target tinnitus freq.” and type in “4000”.
Nice work! In the test, there were several ‘questions’ where I could hear no tones at all. A “Can’t Hear a Tone at all’ or ‘No Clue’ button would keep me from having to guess. Thanks.
Super-thanks for the page, I am going to try the exercise. The official medicine does not give you any solution and the fraudsters are all over google adds, so it is great to have this resource to at least try.
Hi All,
I got an initial tinnitus and diagnosed hear loss at some high frequencies. I hear a very high pitch, not really loud, due to work and probably loud music in a disco both building up. It has been there for 5 years now and my take is it won’t go away. I experience the “I am sad about not being able to enjoy silence”, but otherwise I ignored it.
About a month ago I got a new sound, around the 3780 Hz, this one is louder and I can hear it during conversations or low TV. It is more difficult to ignore so I started reading more about tinnitus. This one seems to go away for a few minutes when I listen to a 3278 Hz tune. I think I can train to reduce or remove this one, we will see.
I made what I now consider a mistake, that is, sleeping with earplugs because my hours are not the same as the people around me. I read that this could lead to an increased sensitivity to sounds and I think it did happen.
Also, if anyone is going to attend a concert or loud party, please, carry plugs with you. You may have peer pressure or circumstances that put you in danger, but you can always put the plugs.
Best
I’ve used your tool and want to share my experience,
I think tinnitus is very different person to person, mostly because of the origin or the cause of it.
I’m guessing I’ve got mine when I fainted from stress and anxiety and fell, my jaw hit the floor, I recovered from it but after one month I caught a cold and got ear infection and sinusitis which I suffered for 3 months and then did a surgery for sinusitis. during this 3 months and after surgery I was experiencing this constant noise ( tinnitus) which I thought the ear infection was cause of it but now after 2 years I am sure its my jaw that is the cause of tinnitus. my lower jaw is putting pressure in the ear that I will hear constant noise.
So I think my kind of tinnitus is from stress and tension and your tool didn’t help in my case.
hope it works for other cases.
With regards to Plasticity, perhaps you could allow selecting whether the pitch is ascending, descending, or the same instead of just same or different.
Hi Tomasz, thank you very much for your words and game/treatment. It did really motivate me to be proactive about T and starting to make peace with it. I hope to have left those black days behind.
I think I read somewhere on the comments, isn’t there a way to know which two frequencies were played and how much they differed from each other? I think this could be of some help when trying to spot your tinnitus frequency or hearing loss, since that zone would be more difficult to notice the difference, right?
Regards from Uruguay.
Thanks for your kind words, Mateo. You can see the frequencies if you put the mouse pointer over the icon (two lines) that shows which tone was higher.
That is right, I thought I’ve seen it somewhere.
Ever thought about building statistics? Like frequencies most missed when same and when different, scores per side L/R, missed frequencies per side. Score development, score throughout the day, etc. Just brainstorming. All of this would be useful to get familiar with your neural activity towards sounds and your personal tinnitus sound or hearing loss.
Just brainstorming but imagine then you get to make one of those, “magnetoencephalographic recording” on yourself and it matches your statistics. It would be a scientific/perceptual match.
I’m willing to code, support and train for a certain period of time, I don’t know where I could get a magnetoencephalographic recording done but I’m willing to do that too.
However, it would look similar to that you referenced. Anyhow, I believe it would contribute to the user experience.
Bests
Hi Tomasz! Yesterday when I was trying to sleep something crazy happenned… I started randomly listening to two tones exaclty as in the game, I don’t know if it ever happenned to you. They didn’t come on command, just appeared at times.
It was amazing at the same time it was a little terryfing. I don’t know if it was imagination, I certainly wasn’t trying to imagine them, and it never happenned to me before to imagine a sound and actually listen to it. Or maybe it was those neurons doing some rearrangement.
I woke up with the tinnitus sound way softer though it has risen a little bit throughout the day.
I wanted to share this and to see if it ever happenned the same to anyone.
You mean you heard two tones, one after another? That’s wild.
One after the other same separation exactly as in the game, it has not happened again since.
As I said:
1 – I don’t recall having the ability to HEAR imaginary sounds.
2 – Even if I wanted to hear them again they wouldn’t appear. It was random.
It was definetly wild.
Thank you for making this and relaying your experience.
I find that duloxetine (SNRI) seems to rapidly reduce my tinnitus symptoms. Potentially a coincidence, but seems to recur when I stop taking. Anyone else have a similar/dissimilar experience?
Also, has anyone tried tDCS? https://bmcneurosci.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12868-018-0467-3
Hello Tamasz.
I T and it isn’t annoying enough to worry about so I have been experimenting on something else on low volume.
I know that this was for T but at 78 I have a notable loss of memory when speaking, forgetting names etc so I googled location of brain function of memory recall and I used this to find which tone was the closest to the location of the Hippocampus and I am trying the tone out on the generator to see if it will work.
Thank you for giving me something to try.
Janet.
Thank you very much for the audio applications and a useful blog!
I have been hearing a hiss in the left ear for a month or so, and at first it distressed me a lot. The hiss has a monotonous, smooth, and a bit ringing timbre. I evaluated its pitch at about 6.9 kHz by comparing it with the reference sound generated by the interactive app on this site. The subjective sound’s volume is hard to evaluate, but it becomes dominant in a quiet environment with the noise level below 15 dB and can be completely masked by the noise 40 dB. In addition, I noticed the hearing of the left ear is a bit worse compared to the right one at the evaluated pitch. The hiss subjectively is localized in the centre of the head, but the left ear receives more of it.
One day I had an unforgettable experience of synesthesia. I was falling asleep while focusing only on the ear hissing. In a short while the hiss spreaded over my head getting more and more loud, though any moment I could clearly hear my own breathing and the distant hrap from the floor above. At one moment I feared if my ears and mind were safe as the phantom noise got such a loudness as I had never had it in my life. However, neither my ears or head were hurt, the thinking was not disturbed, and the body felt fairly relaxed as just before sleeping. It seemed everything was alright, despite the omnipresent escalating hum streaming out my head. However, I stopped worrying and with interest waited for what would be the next. Suddenly, a flash of light brightened up the inner sight in one shade of grey color; the hum disappeared and I was able to hear normally as without tinnitus. I presume that the hum didn’t actually disappear but rather transformed into another form since my brain could not perceive it as sound due to the volume overflow. Anyway, I slept soundly the rest of the night, though the hiss came back in the morning.
The experience taught me several things about my hiss symptome.
1. The hiss never stops and, likely, hasn’t even reduced since appearance
2. The hiss itself is harmless as it neither causes pain or interferes with hearing.
3. The hiss perception is very flexible and, hopefully, can be lessened to zero.
The last point encouraged me and in order to reduce the perception I followed this strategy.
1. I recognized the hiss as a part of myself and didn’t try to fight it anymore
2. I always focused hearing attention on the surrounding sounds, not on the hiss
3. At night time I allowed the hiss as loud as it gets and didn’t fear
Nowadays, tinnitus does not disturb me during the day, though I can hear it if I want it. At night I found myself sleeping with the hiss even better, as it shields me somehow from neighbors’ harps, wind’s squeaks and other disturbing noises. I tried the speaker test several times and reached 14th level by now, but have not noticed any difference.