Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (TRT) is another form of potential treatment being offered to patients with chronic tinnitus. This method has received worldwide recognition during the last decade.
What is TRT?
Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (TRT) was introduced by Dr. Pawel Jastreboff and Dr. Jonathan Hazell in late 80s. A neurophysiologist doctor, Dr. Jastreboff who has conducted research at universities such as Yale and Maryland together with his wife Margaret, an associate professor of otolaryngology, joined their experiences in neurophysiology, electro-acoustics, neuroscience, biophysics, biochemistry and pharmacology to study how the brain responds and processes information inside the auditory canals.
The conclusion by Dr. Jastreboff was that by retraining the brain to familiarize, or disregard certain noises, patients who suffer from tinnitus will finally be free from the irritating symptoms. This method of treatment is what we call today as Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (TRT).
How TRT works?
The treatment of tinnitus should focus mainly on the limbic and autonomic itself and secondary attention is given to the tinnitus feeling itself according to the neurophysiology model of tinnitus. The function of our central auditory nervous system is to process environmental sounds through sorting, routing and identifying related neural signals.
Most of the sounds stimulate emotions (limbic system) and cause behavioral reactions (autonomic nervous system). These rules of learning and conditioning apply to external sounds that can also apply to tinnitus signal. If the person’s tinnitus turn out to be related to an emotional response, any future perceptions of the tinnitus will likely react to the same response. It is vital to know that majority of the connections are at the subliminal level and tinnitus retraining therapy procedures take this into account.
The objective of tinnitus retraining therapy (TRT) is to retrain the patient’s brain so that it absorbs the sound that he is usually unaware of. In doing so when he hears the sound, it is not troublesome.
TRT allows recovery from tinnitus using the basic brain plasticity theory. It supports the theory that the human brain is capable of maximizing and minimizing the amount of attention from several internal and external stimulation. This increasing or decreasing of attention happens on a subliminal level of the brain. It also happens in the regions of the central nervous system which takes charge of some important functions of the body like sleep cycles, heart rate, emotional feelings of well-being or distress, hormone productions, and other important, involuntary regulatory functions.When those symptoms like irritating ear noise happen, such as tinnitus, this subliminal brain will respond into action.
Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (TRT) is a beneficial method to the management and treatment of tinnitus. TRT is effective for both tinnitus and hyperacusis and it can also be successfully implemented through audio logic practices.