ECSE Departmental Research Seminars
Title: Tinnitus as a window to understanding sensory and other perceptions
Speaker: Mr. I E Dixon
ECSE, Monash University
Abstract
The act of “hearing” is an amazingly complex and plastic phenomena involving peripheral apparatus, neural apparatus and perception; and amongst this entire endeavour of understanding, tinnitus offers us a unique window into the understanding of sensory perception.
Despite extensive research and clinical efforts, a consensus regarding the tinnitus mechanism/s and a useful therapeutic intervention remain elusive.
Initially, this researcher explored cochlear mechanics as the key to understanding tinnitus. However this exploration has necessarily broadened into what is now an integrated view of the latest science across peripheral apparatus, neural apparatus and perception. Further, a number of models have been developed by the researcher to assist in understanding and explaining the mechanisms involved.
Whilst one might expect that the workings of hearing and auditory perception have already yielded their secrets to science; unfortunately this is not yet the case.
The means by which the cochlea transduces sounds into firing patterns of auditory neuron fibres (ANF) is not yet settled; although there are a number of contending cochlear transduction models. Similarly, the means by which behaviourally relevant and highly complex sounds are handled at high speed between the cochlea and the auditory cortex (AI) is still the subject on ongoing research. The extent to which plasticity, fractal dimensions of neural signalling and coincidence coding of complex neural signals across large populations of auditory neurons in both the afferent (upwards to the cortex) and efferent (from the cortex to the periphery) is relevant is still the subject of investigation and contention. Further, the means by which the brain obtains a useful representation of the external environment (perception) is still under investigation; with some interesting new paradigms emerging from a number of groups.
A variety of experiments with auditory stimulus devices have been conducted to date; and the results of such trials will also be presented.
This research is leading to a useful understanding of the operation of the hearing peripheral apparatus, neural apparatus and perception – and emerging derivative therapeutic approaches.
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