• J V Smit, M L F Janssen, H Schulze, A Jahanshahi, J J Van Overbeeke, Y Temel, and R J Stokroos.
• Department of Ear Nose and Throat/Head and Neck Surgery, Maastricht University Medical Center, Maastricht, The Netherlands; Department of Neuroscience, School for Mental Health and Neuroscience, Maastricht University Medical Center, Maastricht, The Netherlands. Electronic address: jasper.smit@maastrichtuniversity.nl.
• Brain Res. 2015 May 22; 1608: 51-65.

AbstractChronic tinnitus, also known as ringing in the ears, affects up to 15% of the adults and causes a serious socio-economic burden. At present, there is no treatment available which substantially reduces the perception of this phantom sound. In the past few years, preclinical and clinical studies have unraveled central mechanisms involved in the pathophysiology of tinnitus, replacing the classical periphery-based hypothesis. In subcortical auditory and non-auditory regions, increased spontaneous activity, neuronal bursting and synchrony were found. When reaching the auditory cortex, these neuronal alterations become perceptually relevant and consequently are perceived as phantom sound. A therapy with a potential to counteract deeply located pathological activity is deep brain stimulation, which has already been demonstrated to be effective in neurological diseases such as Parkinson's disease. In this review, several brain targets are discussed as possible targets for deep brain stimulation in tinnitus. The potential applicability of this treatment in tinnitus is discussed with examples from the preclinical field and clinical case studies. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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