Dr. Joseph Michael Little D.C.

Tinnitus and chiropractic care? Really?

Most likely, traditional chiropractic manipulation therapy will not offer resolution to tinnitus. However, Functional Neurology - a specialized subset of the chiropractic profession - often offers improvement. Here's my thought process when it comes to tinnitus. The neural generators of tinnitus often involve central areas of the brain, even when there is a peripheral etiology. Contemporary views are such that patients with tinnitus suffer an inability to laterally inhibit in the cortical frequency areas that map or reflect the injury damage in the periphery. The loss of inhibition really equates with an increase of excitation in the brain in areas associated with the lesion’s targets. These changes are plastic in nature resulting in changes in the function of the brain specific to the auditory system with a resultant mismatch of excitation and inhibition. Because the auditory system is multisynaptic, there may be plastic changes in all areas of the activating system from the VIIIth nerve to the cochlear nucleus and inferior colliculus with mapping error and also in the thalamus, auditory cortex and the limbic system. Each neuron in the auditory pathways has a specific frequency that is characteristic to that neuron. Humans have a unique tonotopic representation that is facilitated by individual neurons who have a characteristic reaction to a specific frequency of sound. When neurons are activated tonitopically they process the activation to central structures that also inhibit through lateral projections, other neurons that have a different frequency characteristic. Music therapy that involves frequencies at the same frequency of the patient’s tinnitus can suppress the tinnitus through an increase in lateral inhibition. It is the loss of the lateral inhibition that allows the “escape” of centrally activated neurons in the auditory pathway, creating plastic changes and the experience of tinnitus. The key in this type of frequency specific lateral inhibition is to create plasticity in the lateral inhibitory pathways involved in the tinnitus with a goal of suppression and alleviation of symptoms. READ MORE