American Tinnitus Association Announces New Diagnostic Tool to Identify Tinnitus in Animals

All I could take away from that article is that animals can't talk, so the research team has devised a method based on behavioural science to diagnose tinnitus in animals. What does this tell about us human tinnitus sufferers? Do tinnitus patients have a special kind of behavior?

The article is obviously not aimed at the general public but researchers and doctors.

 

Here's another article on that research:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170119110931.htm

 

Yes and no. Using behavioral paradigms like gap-detection is old news. These guys seem to have developed a new method that is supposedly more accurate or allows quicker assessments.

 

If behavioral studies can help detect tinnitus in animals, and it's painless, why are they not using it on humans? There are plenty of tinnitus sufferers who they could use this on. They could easily tell if it works or not. Instead of inducing tinnitus in animals just to see if they can detect it by their behavior. It seems far fetched to me, and plain stupid to be honest with you.

 

It seems like scientists are not genuinely interested in finding a way to detect and diagnose tinnitus in humans. They just want more play time.

They say that the majority of tinnitus cases are due to inner ear damage. Yet they don't have any non-invasive diagnostic tool to get intracochlear images at the cellular level to assess the damage. They rely on indirect assessment using standard hearing tests. Or using OAE and ABR tests at best. These tests are very much dependent on the interpretation, and they are not very objective. In that respect, hearing test is the worst of them! The OAE and ABR are not willingly offered.

Then you have these behavior based tests which are supposed to be painless, easily administered, and not expensive. Yet they don't use them?! Instead they intentionally inflict hearing damage on animals so that they develop tinnitus, then study their behavior. If this is such a great idea, why are they not using these tests on humans?

I understand they need animals to do drug testing on. But if these tests prove ineffective in humans, why would they be that much more effective or useful in animal models?

 

Animal testing it is then!

 

Of course, it would help tremendously if they could crack the code of the human brain.



They could then use neuromorphic computer chips,



and supercomputer grids



to run virtual drug simulations targeting specific brain problems.



A lot of animal lives would be saved. We could reduce animal use for the final stages.



It may seem like science fiction, but a lot of this is either already been done or is under development. Imagine if it could take only days or hours to find a cure for something like tinnitus. Dare to dream the impossible!

 

I agree! But it's not only because we as a group of people are desperately in need of a cure. It's essentially what makes us human! We have this urge to make the nature adapt to us, instead of us adapting to nature. For good and for worse!