Serenity (tm) - Tinnitus sound masking in human clinical trials:
Serenity (tm) is a program that I developed with a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) using Evolutionary Computation (EC) to benefit those suffering from tinnitus (aka "ringing in the ears") and with which we performed human clinical trials with people suffering from tinnitus.
The concept is to create a sound that "masks" the tones, ringing, or other noise/sounds that the user is hearing.
It is well known among tinnitus sufferers that some relief may be experienced by listening to loud sounds such as white or pink noise, ocean surf, birds chirping, and other sounds.
If you don't have tinnitus, you may not understand the experience, but users relate it to receiving some relief for sore muscles through massage (stimulation.) However, this program directly stimulates the hearing of the user in an attempt to lessen the intensity of the tinnitus being experienced.
Each tinnitus sufferer has a different experience, which is why a continuously evolving sound mask may be beneficial.
The video (at right) briefly demonstrates the program. There are many more types of sounds offered in the program than you see in the video and it is necessary for the user to give the program sufficient time to discover some sound patterns that work better than others, for each user. The outcome of the clinical trials was such that a statistically significant percentage of users experienced a beneficial decrease in the intensity of their tinnitus. A paper discussing the results can be found within the NSI publications directory: www.natural-selection.com
Copyright 2007 Natural Selection, Inc. (R), www.natural-selection.com
Developer: Tim Hays
Artificial Intelligence Demos 4:
Serenity (tm) demo video (above)
