Playing and listening to tailor-made notched music: cortical plasticity induced by unimodal and multimodal training in tinnitus patients.

Janna Pape,Maximilian Bruchmann,Claudia Rudack,Christo Pantev,Andreas Wollbrink,Evangelos Paraskevopoulos

doi:10.1155/2014/516163

Janna Pape, Maximilian Bruchmann + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/516163

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Abstract

Background. The generation and maintenance of tinnitus are assumed to be based on maladaptive functional cortical reorganization. Listening to modified music, which contains no energy in the range of the individual tinnitus frequency, can inhibit the corresponding neuronal activity in the auditory cortex. Music making has been shown to be a powerful stimulator for brain plasticity, inducing changes in multiple sensory systems. Using magnetoencephalographic (MEG) and behavioral measurements we evaluated the cortical plasticity effects of two months of (a) active listening to (unisensory) versus (b) learning to play (multisensory) tailor-made notched music in nonmusician tinnitus patients. Taking into account the fact that uni- and multisensory trainings induce different patterns of cortical plasticity we hypothesized that these two protocols will have different affects. Results. Only the active listening (unisensory) group showed significant reduction of tinnitus related activity of the middle temporal cortex and an increase in the activity of a tinnitus-coping related posterior parietal area. Conclusions. These findings indicate that active listening to tailor-made notched music induces greater neuroplastic changes in the maladaptively reorganized cortical network of tinnitus patients while additional integration of other sensory modalities during training reduces these neuroplastic effects.

Highlights

Subjective tinnitus is an auditory perception in the absence of physical sources [1, 2]
A t-test showed that this difference was not significant, t(20) = 1.233, P = 0.232, we chose to analyze the development of tinnitus severity by means of an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) to control for possible baseline effects due to accidentally imbalanced sampling
The MEG results reveal, for the first time according to our knowledge, that unimodal TMNM treatment induces favorable plastic cortical changes in the temporal cortex, and in a posterior parietal region, which constitutes another node of the cortical network that underlies the generation and/or maintenance of the tinnitus perception [41,42,43]

Summary

Introduction

Subjective tinnitus is an auditory perception in the absence of physical sources [1, 2]. Upregulations of glutamatergic and cholinergic systems may be involved as well [10, 11] These changes affect several levels of the auditory pathway along with nonauditory centers comprising a network that includes posterior parietal, frontal, somatosensory, and limbic regions [12,13,14]. Listening to modified music, which contains no energy in the range of the individual tinnitus frequency, can inhibit the corresponding neuronal activity in the auditory cortex. These findings indicate that active listening to tailor-made notched music induces greater neuroplastic changes in the maladaptively reorganized cortical network of tinnitus patients while additional integration of other sensory modalities during training reduces these neuroplastic effects

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