Studies show that giving an electric shock to the tongue reduces chronic tinnitus
'Tinnitus,' in which you hear sounds that are not external, such as 'keen' and 'boon,' is often difficult to treat because the cause is often unknown even after a medical examination. Research results have been announced that such tinnitus can be reduced by 'electric shock to the tongue'.
Bimodal neuromodulation combining sound and tongue stimulation reduces tinnitus symptoms in a large randomized clinical study | Science Translational Medicine
Electric shocks to the tongue can quiet chronic ringing ears | Science | AAAS
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/electric-shocks-tongue-can-quiet-chronic-ringing-ears
According to Hubert Lim, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota at Twin Cities, who directed the study, a cure for tinnitus, an electric shock to the tongue, was discovered by accident. At that time, Mr. Lim was conducting an experiment to restore hearing by ' deep brain stimulation ' that sends electrical stimulation to the brain to improve brain dysfunction. However, when inserting the electrodes into the brain, Mr. Lim made the mistake of placing the electrodes just a short distance from the appropriate spot. What jumped into Mr. Lim's ear when he started the device without noticing this mistake was the patient's cry, 'The tinnitus that had been annoying for many years has stopped!'
In the wake of this coincidence, Mr. Lim began investigating 'which part of the body should be given an electric shock to eliminate tinnitus.' I gave an electric shock to the guinea pig's ears, neck, limbs, etc. and determined that the 'tongue' was one of the best spots.
According to the research result that 'when you give a certain kind of electric shock and at the same time, you can control the malfunction of neurons in the brain by listening to the sound,' Lim said, 'Music while giving an electric shock to the tongue.' I tried an experiment called 'Let me hear.' Lim placed plastic-covered electrodes on the tongues of 326 subjects who were suffering from tinnitus, passing current through them, and listening to electronic music-like noise that changed rapidly at various frequencies. In addition, it seems that the given electrical stimulation was such that the crackling foaming candy popped in the mouth.
When the experiment was continued for 12 weeks, more than 80% of subjects reported that 'tinnitus was reduced.' When we asked them to self-evaluate the severity of tinnitus on a 100-point scale from 0 to 100 points, we found that this experiment reduced the severity of tinnitus by an average of 14 points. In addition, in a follow-up study conducted 12 months later, 80% of subjects said that tinnitus remained reduced after the experiment.
According to the science of the academic journal, an experiment to reduce tinnitus by electric shock was conducted in 2018, but in this experiment, the part that gives electric shock is the 'neck and cheek', and the degree of reduction of tinnitus is also average. It was only 7 points. Victoria Bayo, a neurologist at Oxford University, commented that 'promising findings', while pointing out the problem that there was no control group in Lim's experiment.
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