Remodel brain to ignore bad buzzing in the ears

• Autores: Claudia Caruana
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 2979, 2014, pág. 21
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Tinnitus, the debilitating condition that plagued Beethoven and Darwin, affects roughly 10% of the world's population, including 30 million people in the US alone. Now, a device based on vagus nerve stimulation promises to eliminate the sounds for good by retraining the brain. At the moment, many chronic sufferers turn to state of the art hearing aids configured to play specific tones meant to cancel out the tinnitus. But these do not always work because they just mask the noise. The new device, developed by MicroTransponder in Dallas TX, works in an entirely different way. The Serenity System uses a transmitter connected to the vagus nerve in the neck--the vagus nerve connects the brain to many of the body's organs.