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Music

This Potential Cure for Tinnitus Turns Your Music Into Therapy

Tinnitracks is a prescription app that re-equilibrates a person's hearing to reduce the effects of tinnitus.
Photo via Pixabay.

The effects of tinnitus far outlast a memorable night at a club. For many, the common affliction can make everyday life unbearable. Now, a German company has created a new prescription app that aims to alleviate the constant ringing.

Sonormed, a German company, has created Tinnitracks, a new prescription app that re-equilibrates a person's hearing to reduce the effects of tinnitus. According to Labiotech, a European biotech news website, Tinnitracks uses software that targets the brain (instead of the ear) to create more lasting relief.

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Tinnitus sufferers will have to visit a doctor who will prescribe patients a card to certify their condition. Patients may then send music to Sonormed. The company will remove the frequencies in the music that causes tinnitus and return it to the patient.

Not all music will be able to serve as effective treatment. According to Sonormed and the Tinnitracks website, "music suitable for therapy has high power in the frequency ranges that are above and below the patient's individual tinnitus frequency." Each track will be assessed for its music spectral qualities and the patient's tinnitus frequency.

According to Labiotech, "Your sense of hearing, however, is able to quickly adapt to this unfamiliar input. This systematically changed input can cause the brain to re-shift its imbalance between excitatory and inhibitory nerve signals in the auditory centre, back towards a healthy balance between the two."

The method is based on research in neurophysiology and neuroacoustics conducted by medical faculty at the Institute for Biosignal Analysis and Biomagnetism at the University of Münster.

Patients who have used it reported a reduction between 25% and 50%. According to Labiotech, the company recently opened an office in Boston, though they still have a while to unveil the program in the United States as they will need to contend with FDA regulations.

In August, we wrote about the proliferation of tinnitus among DJs.