Tinnitus is an annoying buzz that manifests itself in many ways. In addition, it can provoke anxiety, stress, depression, and fatigue. The acoustic therapies have become the most commonly applied ...treatment for tinnitus, either self-administered or clinically prescribed. Binaural Sound Therapy (BST) and Music Therapy (MT) aim to reverse the neuroplasticity phenomenon related to tinnitus by adequately stimulating the auditory path-way. The goal of this research is to evaluate the feasibility of applying BST for tinnitus treatment by comparing its effect with MT effect.
34 patients with tinnitus from 29 to 60 years were informed about the experimental procedure and consented their participation. Patients were divided into two groups: 1) MT and 2) BST. They applied their sound-based treatment for one hour every day along eight weeks. Each treatment was adjusted to Hearing Loss (HL) and tinnitus characteristics of each participant. To record EEG data, a bio-signal amplifier with sixteen EEG channels was used. The system recorded data at a sampling frequency of 256 Hz within a bandwidth between 0.1 and 100 Hz.
The questionnaire-monitoring reported that MT increased tinnitus perception in 30% of the patients, and increased anxiety and stress in 8% of them. Regarding EEG-monitoring, major neural synchronicity over the frontal lobe was found after the treatment. In the case of BST reduced stress in 23% of patients. Additionally, BST reduced tinnitus perception similar to MT (15% of patients). With respect to EEG-monitoring, slightly major neural synchronicity over the right frontal lobe was found after the treatment.
MT should be applied with caution since it could be worsening the tinnitus sufferer condition. On the other hand, BST is recommended for tinnitus sufferers who have side effects concerning stress but no anxiety.
The management of chronic neuropathic pain remains a challenge, because pain is subjective, and measuring it objectively is usually out of question. However, neuropathic pain is also a signal ...provided by maladaptive neuronal activity. Thus, the integral management of chronic neuropathic pain should not only rely on the subjective perception of the patient, but also on objective data that measures the evolution of neuronal activity. We will discuss different objective and subjective methods for the characterization of neuropathic pain. Additionally, the gaps and proposals for an integral management of chronic neuropathic pain will also be discussed. The current management that relies mostly on subjective measures has not been sufficient, therefore, this has hindered advances in pain management and clinical trials. If an integral characterization is achieved, clinical management and stratification for clinical trials could be based on both questionnaires and neuronal activity. Appropriate characterization may lead to an increased effectiveness for new therapies, and a better quality of life for neuropathic pain sufferers.
•We integrate subjective and objective methods for characterizing neuropathic pain.•The need for an integral characterization has led to poor pain management.•Maladaptive plasticity and aberrant neural oscillations cause neuropathic pain.•EEG can measure the evoked and spontaneous components of neuropathic pain.•We propose a standardized methodology of three stimuli: tactile, vibration and air.
A brain-computer interface (BCI) aims to establish communication between the human brain and a computing system so as to enable the interaction between an individual and his environment without using ...the brain output pathways. Individuals control a BCI system by modulating their brain signals through mental tasks (e.g., motor imagery or mental calculation) or sensory stimulation (e.g., auditory, visual, or tactile). As users modulate their brain signals at different frequencies and at different levels, the appropriate characterization of those signals is necessary. The modulation of brain signals through mental tasks is furthermore a skill that requires training. Unfortunately, not all the users acquire such skill. A practical solution to this problem is to assess the user probability of controlling a BCI system. Another possible solution is to set the bandwidth of the brain oscillations, which is highly sensitive to the users' age, sex and anatomy. With this in mind, NeuroIndex, a Python executable script, estimates a neurophysiological prediction index and the individual alpha frequency (IAF) of the user in question. These two parameters are useful to characterize the user EEG signals, and decide how to go through the complex process of adapting the human brain and the computing system on the basis of previously proposed methods. NeuroIndeX is not only the implementation of those methods, but it also complements the methods each other and provides an alternative way to obtain the prediction parameter. However, an important limitation of this application is its dependency on the IAF value, and some results should be interpreted with caution. The script along with some electroencephalographic datasets are available on a GitHub repository in order to corroborate the functionality and usability of this application.
•Student performance was 4% higher in a quiet room than in learning commons.•Noise in learning commons increased HR in 3.48%, regardless of task demands.•Noise in learning commons increased BR in ...22.91%, regardless of task demands.•Mental resources were reduced at least in 3% due to the environmental noise.
Environmental noise (EN) refers to unpleasant harmful sounds that deteriorates living conditions. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how EN affects students at learning commons, where EN increases between 70 and 90 dBA, and which levels disturb psycho-physiologically. For this purpose, 16 students of Tecnologico de Monterrey were recruited: nine men and seven women. They were divided into four groups, and were involved in two activities: to solve a puzzle of 300 pieces without and with EN at 75 dBA. In both activities, a summative evaluation based on the level of puzzle completeness, and the electrophysiological monitoring of heart and blink rate, and neural electrical activity were conducted. Results showed that student performance was 4% higher in a quiet room than in learning commons. EN increased heart rate in 3.48%, and blink rate in 22.91%, and neural electrical activity was reduced at least in 3%, regardless of task demands. The findings of the present study suggest that academic work is difficult to undertake in learning commons when EN is above the permissible limit, and what diminishes the performance of students and alters their electrophysiological functioning.
In this paper, the Mexican Emotional Speech Database (MESD) that contains single-word emotional utterances for anger, disgust, fear, happiness, neutral and sadness with adult (male and female) and ...child voices is described. To validate the emotional prosody of the uttered words, a cubic Support Vector Machines classifier was trained on the basis of prosodic, spectral and voice quality features for each case study: (1) male adult, (2) female adult and (3) child. In addition, cultural, semantic, and linguistic shaping of emotional expression was assessed by statistical analysis. This study was registered at BioMed Central and is part of the implementation of a published study protocol. Mean emotional classification accuracies yielded 93.3%, 89.4% and 83.3% for male, female and child utterances respectively. Statistical analysis emphasized the shaping of emotional prosodies by semantic and linguistic features. A cultural variation in emotional expression was highlighted by comparing the MESD with the INTERFACE for Castilian Spanish database. The MESD provides reliable content for linguistic emotional prosody shaped by the Mexican cultural environment. In order to facilitate further investigations, a corpus controlled for linguistic features and emotional semantics, as well as one containing words repeated across voices and emotions are provided. The MESD is made freely available.
The impact of binaural beats (BBs) on human cognition and behavior remains and various methods have been used to measure their effect, including neurophysiological, psychometric, and human ...performance evaluations. The few approaches where the level of neural synchronicity and connectivity were measured by neuroimaging techniques have only been undertaken in spontaneous mode. The present research proposes an approach based on the oddball paradigm to study BB effect by estimating the level of attention induced by BBs. Evoked activity of 25 young adults between 19 and 24 years old with no hearing impairments nor clinical neurological history were analyzed. The experiment was conducted in two different sessions of 24.5 min. The first part consisted of 20-min BB stimulation in either theta (BB
θ
) or beta (BB
β
). After the BB stimulation, an oddball paradigm was applied in each BB condition to assess the attentional effect induced by BBs. Attention enhancement is expected for BB
β
with respect to BB
θ
. Target event related potentials (ERPs) were mainly analyzed in the time and time–frequency domains. The frequency analysis was based on continuous wavelet transform (CWT), event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP), and inter-trial phase coherence (ITPC). The study revealed that the P300 component was not significantly different between conditions (BB
θ
vs. BB
β
). However, the target grand average ERP in BB
θ
condition was mainly composed of 8 Hz-frequency components, appearing before 400 ms post-stimulus, and mainly on the centro-parietal regions. In contrast, the target grand average ERP in BB
β
condition was mainly composed of frequency components below 6 Hz, mainly appearing at 400 ms post-stimulus on the parieto-occipital regions. Furthermore, ERPs in the BB
θ
condition were more phase locked than the BB
β
condition.
•Acoustic measurements of Edzna archaeological zone.•Analysis of the Reverberation time and Clarity of Edzna.•Evaluation of the acoustic properties of the Edzna archaeological zone.•Assessment of the ...historical acoustic conditions and their influence on the site's significance.•Implications for restoring the acoustic heritage of Edzna.
Over the years, numerous acoustic measurements have been made to examine archaeological spaces, providing valuable insights into how sound played a role in several cultures throughout history. This research found twenty-eight studies worldwide in the last seven years (2016 – 2022); twenty in Europe (e.g., Stonehenge in England or the Palace of Charles V in Spain); four in Asia (e.g., Rachmaninov Hall in Russia); three in America (e.g., Mexico City Cathedral in Mexico); and one in Africa (Iwan masjids in Egypt). However, there has been limited investigation into the acoustics of cultures in America such as the Incas, Aztecs, Mapuches, Patagones, or Guaranies. The Mayan zone, in particular the archaeological site of Edzna (Campeche, Mexico) is not an exception. This work presents a practical and portable acoustic measurement of this site to determine if the architectural spaces were designed considering sound effects. Edzna is organized in six main places: (1) Main Plaza, (2) Nohochna, (3) Great Acropolis, (4) Five-story building, (5) Small Acropolis and (6) Ballcourt. Acoustic measurements for this study were taken in the Main Plaza, the Great Acropolis, and the Small Acropolis. This study revealed that the archaeological zone presents high Reverberation Time (RT20) levels above 2 or 3 s. In particular, the RT20 of the Main Plaza (RT20 = 2.2 s on average), suggests that the space was used for crowded events where participants could listen around the plaza. In contrast, the Great and Small Acropolis (RT20 = 1.2 s on average) were probably used for private, more intimate events.
Physics and engineering combine various subjects and disciplines into one single umbrella. Technology and computer engineers working in electronic instrumentation aim at making measurements quickly, ...and accurately using skills and knowledge that they mainly acquired at university by means of hands-on lab experiments. Teaching undergraduate students about (1) computer interfacing, and (2) instrument control techniques for collecting and processing data to automate processes are subjects that seldom appear in their curriculum. A computational software package that allows rapid prototyping is MATLAB. In this paper, therefore, we describe a graphical user interface (GUI) developed for controlling commonly available undergraduate lab electronic test instruments. In addition, we move towards the digital signal processing, providing a teaching lesson for biomedical engineering students.
At present, the majority of the top tinnitus treatments is based on sound. Sound-based therapies may become highly effective when the right patient at the correct time and the appropriate context is ...selected. The investigation presented here attempts to compare sound therapies based on music, retraining, neuromodulation, and binaural sounds in line with (1) neuro-audiology assessments and (2) psychological evaluations. Sound-based therapies were applied in 76 volunteers with tinnitus for 60 days. The neuro-audiology assessment was based on the estimation of the approximate entropy of the electrical neural activity. This assessment revealed that the whole frequency structure of the neural networks showed a higher level of activeness in tinnitus sufferers than in control individuals. Then psychological evaluation showed that retraining treatment tended to be the most effective sound-based therapy to reduce tinnitus perception, but it may be not recommended for individuals with anxiety. Binaural sounds and neuromodulation produced very similar effects at reducing tinnitus perception, stress and anxiety. Music treatments can be applied with caution since they may worsen the condition due to their frequency content.
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•A system composed out of four modules (one master module and three submodules) that evokes three types of stimuli: touch, air, and vibration.•The system works with python scripts and ...OpenViBE open software via serial port, and radiofrequency telecommunication for connection between modules.•Modules are portable and are easy to assemble.•Air and Touch module had 500 ms delay between the stimulus cue and initialization of actuators. Vibration had around 150 a ms delay.
Understanding the somatosensory system and its abnormalities requires the development of devices that can accurately stimulate the human skin. New methods for assessing the somatosensory system can enhance the diagnosis, treatments, and prognosis for individuals with somatosensory impairments. Therefore, the design of NeuroSense, a tactile stimulator that evokes three types of daily life sensations (touch, air and vibration) is described in this work. The prototype aims to evoke quantitative assessments to evaluate the functionality of the somatosensory system and its abnormal conditions that affect the quality of life. In addition, the device has proven to have varying intensities and onset latencies that produces somatosensory evoked potentials and energy desynchronization on somatosensory cortex.
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