Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation for the Treatment of Tinnitus

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.