Tinnitus. A special example of a failure mode for your plastic brain.

Millions of individuals (2% of humankind) are plagued by continuous sounds generated in their skulls, not coming from the real world. Because these ringing or roaring sounds are inescapable and because they strongly influence emotional-control processes in the brain, they can literally drive an individual who hears them incessantly just a little bit crazy. No one dies from tinnitus (although its sufferers have a substantially elevated suicide rate). But it represents one of a long list of brain plasticity-generated problems that can substantially degrade – and in the extreme, destroy – a sufferer’s quality of life. I am writing this blog from a scientific meeting in Italy at which 20 top neuroscientists (about half of who some level of direct understanding of tinnitus; the other half...