'People who experience tinnitus might finally have some hope for alleviating their symptoms, after an experimental device that stimulates the tongue was found to ease the condition in a sample of 273 volunteers with a chronic case of it.

Subjects took treatments of up to an hour a day for 12 weeks, with both the tongue popping and the ear pulsing personalised to each participant's level of sensitivity. The device is controlled by the person using it, which means Lenire is potentially something that can be used in people's homes.

The combined treatment caused an improvement in symptoms for 86 percent of the participants, with an average drop of around 14 points on a tinnitus severity ranking scored from 1 to 100.

This approach of mixing sounds and electrical stimulation is technically known as bimodal neuromodulation, and this isn't the first time it's been linked to improvements in tinnitus. However, there was no control group involved in the study, and more research will be needed before Lenire can be put on the market.'


www.sciencealert.com/audible-tones-and-tongue-buzzing-could-give-us-a-tinnitus-treatment-at-last