You many have experienced a ringing sound in your ears that does not really exist. According to scientists, they have discovered that what goes on in human brain with regard to tinnitus is different from what happens when brain senses real sound. The scientists have discovered that while observing brain activity related to tinnitus.

The new study could be helpful in treating the often debilitating condition, which affects about one in five individuals. The study was conducted by researchers from the United States and the United Kingdom. During the study, the researchers took a recording directly from the brain of a man, about 50 years old, who was having surgery for epilepsy.

As per reports of Futurity, Will Sedley, researcher from Newcastle University in the UK and co-author of the study, said that the most amazing discovery was that the activity directly associated with tinnitus was very extensive and spanned a large proportion of the part of the brain the researchers measured from. According to Sedley, in contrast, brain responses to a sound that copied the individual's tinnitus were localized to just a tiny area.

Phillip Gander, a postdoctoral research scholar in the neurosurgery department at the University of Iowa and co-leader of the study, said, "This has profound implications for the understanding and treatment of tinnitus, as we now know it is not encoded like normal sound, and may not be treatable by just targeting a localized part of the hearing system."

Gander said that it is very rare that an individual requiring invasive electrode monitoring for epilepsy also has tinnitus. During the study, which has been published in Current Biology, the researchers contrasted brain activity during times when the subject's tinnitus was stronger and weaker.

According to the researchers, they found some expected tinnitus-linked brain activity. They also discovered that the activity extended to encompass almost the entire auditory cortex with other parts of the brain.