A New Product Development and Effect Analysis of Tinnitus Therapy Based on Pink Noise Tone
Authors: Lai Hongbo , Wang Gaoxing , Gao Meijuan , Zhou Yang , Wu Shuai , Wang Jianling 
Published: January 2021

Sound therapy for tinnitus includes not only acclimatization therapy and masking therapy, but also music therapy. Traditional music therapy for tinnitus is mostly based on "white noise". This study attempts to introduce pink noise into the field of tinnitus rehabilitation therapy. The semi-duplicate tone produced on the basis of fractal technology (fractal mathematics) is used as the basic tone of tinnitus rehabilitation treatment. It is found that pink noise has better inhibition function for tinnitus. At the same time, 30 adult patients (17 males and 13 females) with tinnitus and hearing loss of varying degrees were selected as the research subjects. The clinical efficacy of tinnitus symptoms was evaluated by fractal music program of hearing aids. The test results showed that there was a significant correlation between the score before admission and the change of P value after treatment. At the same time, further analysis shows that white noise (left) and pink noise (right) are the spectrograms of basic tunes. The frequency component power of pink noise mainly distributes in the middle and low frequency bands. It is the slope of -3dB/Oct. It attenuates downward with its multiple frequency. That is to say, pink noise hears a flat frequency response in the human ear, that is, "a very pleasant noise". In this study, for tinnitus treatment of this "pink noise" tune, there are two forms of implementation, one is the hardware integrated circuit chip, that is, similar to portable hearing aids equipment, for professional physicians to examine. Secondly, APP based on Android and IOS system produces fractal melody simulating pink noise by using semi-replication algorithm (fractal mathematics principle), which provides patients with mild tinnitus symptoms and no need of long-term treatment, and finally eliminates the discomfort caused by tinnitus.ObjectiveMusic therapy, as well as retraining therapy and masking therapy, is the common method that modern otologists used to treat tinnitus patients. Most of the traditional music therapies for tinnitus use “white noise" as the basic tone. Nevertheless, the efforts to explore other kinds of noise that has a better curative effect on tinnitus is still in need. This paper aims to apply “pink noise” into the tinnitus rehabilitation therapy field to explore whether the tone has a better inhibitory effect on tinnitus.MethodsWe produce the semi-duplicate tone based on fractal technology (fractal mathematics and use this semi-duplicate tone as the basic tone.34 adult tinnitus patients with vary degrees of hearing loss are selected as the research subjects. The patients are treated with music therapy by the fractal music program of hearing aids, and adopt the evaluation of the curative effect for their tinnitus 1 month, 3 months and 6 months after the treatment respectively.ResultsThe result shows that there is a significant difference between the score before the treatment and that after the treatment (P<0.05). In addition, by further comparing the spectrograms of tones based on white noise and pink noise, it finds that the frequency component power of pink noise mainly distributes in the middle and low frequency bands. Its slope is -3dB/Oct, which means the frequency decay downward with this multiple. That is to say, pink noise was heard as a flat frequency response in the human ear, that is, "a very pleasant noise".ConclusionsFinally, this paper suggests two kinds of new tinnitus treatment products based on the "pink noise", one is the hardware integrated circuit chip, that is, similar to portable hearing aids equipment, targeting at the diagnosis process of professional aurist otologists; the other one is, the APP based on Android and IOS system, targeting at the patients with mild tinnitus symptoms and no need of long-term treatment, helping them eliminate the discomfort caused by tinnitus.