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Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation for the Treatment of Tinnitus

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Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation in Neuropsychiatric Disorders

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Abstract

Tinnitus is an auditory phantom percept in the absence of an external acoustic source. The pathophysiology of tinnitus remains debatable with current pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatments producing poor outcomes. A novel approach using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has emerged as an appealing and promising modality for tinnitus suppression. In this chapter, we summarized studies on tDCS application in patients with tinnitus. The majority of studies targeted the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) with encouraging findings even without numerous aspects, such as optimal stimulation parameters and maintenance of long-term beneficial effects, remaining to be established. Also, more recently, new transcranial electrical stimulation techniques such as high-definition tDCS (HD-tDCS) and transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) have been explored as potential effective, well tolerated, and easy to apply therapeutic treatments for tinnitus.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Trinity Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Sook Ling Leong & Sven Vanneste

  2. Lab for Clinical and Integrative Neuroscience, School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA

    Sven Vanneste

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  1. Sook Ling Leong
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  2. Sven Vanneste
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Correspondence to Sven Vanneste .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    André R. Brunoni

  2. Department of Psychology and Neurosciences, Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors, Dortmund, Germany

    Michael A. Nitsche

  3. Black Dog Institute & School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

    Colleen K. Loo

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Leong, S.L., Vanneste, S. (2021). Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation for the Treatment of Tinnitus. In: Brunoni, A.R., Nitsche, M.A., Loo, C.K. (eds) Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation in Neuropsychiatric Disorders. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76136-3_32

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76136-3_32

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