Dr Emilie Cardon, at the University of Antwerp, is investigating whether a promising treatment for tinnitus – applying mild electrical currents that stimulate parts of the brain – can be personalised to the patient to increase its effectiveness.
Project start date: September 2025
Project end date: September 2028
About the project
Although a treatment called ‘transcranial direct current stimulation’ (tDCS) has shown potential in helping to treat tinnitus, people with tinnitus have responded differently to it. The research team will now look more at how tDCS changes brain activity, rather than only its impact on tinnitus, to understand if the treatment can be tailored to different people’s needs.
Instead of using the same settings for everyone, they will tailor the treatment to each volunteer, adjusting it according to their specific brain structure.
How it works
The researchers will study how tDCS impacts a part of the brain called the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which manages our responses to various stimuli and emotions, including the distress caused by tinnitus. By adjusting how they stimulate this region according to individual people’s specific brain structure, they hope to reduce the severity of tinnitus symptoms.
They will also measure how tDCS affects brain activity by measuring specific signals in the brain called cortical auditory evoked potentials. These measurements will help the researchers to see how the brain responds to sounds, providing an objective measure of how tDCS influences brain function in general.
How will this research benefit people with tinnitus?
This research could lead to a more effective treatment for tinnitus by providing a personalised therapy that considers individual differences in brain structure. By understanding how tDCS affects brain activity, the researchers can also improve its use and increase the likelihood of successful treatment outcomes.
About the researcher
Dr Emilie Cardon is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp in the Resonant Labs research group. Her project is being funded by RNID’s Discovery Research Grant and started in September 2025.
I hope that we will improve the efficiency of non-invasive brain stimulation as a potential treatment for tinnitus, which would make it a viable treatment option for a larger group of people. More generally, I hope that my research into the underlying brain activity in people with tinnitus will contribute to our understanding of this complex phenomenon.”
