Ricerc@Sapienza

Immune-mediated inner ear disease can be primary, when the autoimmune response is against the inner ear, or secondary. The latter is characterized by the involvement of the ear in the presence of systemic autoimmune conditions. Sensorineural hearing loss is the most common audiovestibular symptom associated with systemic autoimmune diseases, although conductive hearing impairment may also be present. Hearing loss may present in a sudden, slowly, rapidly progressive or fluctuating form, and is mostly bilateral and asymmetric.

Tinnitus is a debilitating perception of sound in the absence of external auditory stimuli. It may have either a central or a peripheral origin in the cochlea. Experimental studies evidenced that an electrical stimulation of peripheral auditory fibers may alleviate symptoms but the underlying mechanisms are still unknown. In this work, a stochastic neuron model is used, that mimics an auditory fiber affected by tinnitus, to check the effects, in terms of firing reduction, of different kinds of electric stimulations, i.e., continuous wave signals and white Gaussian noise.