Millions of people suffer from chronic continuing ear pain after an accident or injury. The continuous humming sound that accompanies tinnitus was thought to be a phantom pain that was not real. New research conducted by Dr. Josef Rauschecker, director of the Laboratory for Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition at Georgetown University Medical Center, is the first to show that chronic ear pain and tinnitus are caused by brain abnormalities that were produced when the ear was first injured.
Rauschecker fund that the brain reorganizes itself after an injury or a very loud sound to prevent the normal reduction of pain sensation and the hearing of sounds that have no physical source. He likens the response to a circuit breaker being left open in the brain. The pain and sounds that people feel and hear are real as far as the brain is concerned.
The nucleus accumbens, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and the anterior cingulate cortex were the regions of the brain found to be most involved in the brain malfunction that produced tinnitus and chronic ear pain. All of the brain regions rely on the transmission of dopamine and serotonin to continue the sensations of chronic pain and ringing in the ears. This discovery provides a target that may end the suffering of millions of people who experience chronic ear pain and tinnitus by using dopamine modulation to restore the brain circuits to their original configuration.
