Susan Shore, PhD, wants to play a trick on the brain to help millions of people with a specific form of tinnitus. After more than a decade of probing the condition’s physiology, her research team at the University of Michigan has developed a novel, noninvasive treatment to carry out their neurological sleight of hand.
The trick? Use both sound and electrical stimulation to alter the brain’s circuitry and slow the firing rates of hyperactive, synchronized neurons, which suppresses the phantom ringing or buzzing of tinnitus.