Put a Spotlight on Tinnitus Research

Starting now, we are going to be working alongside our friends at the Tinnitus Research Initiative to put a spotlight on tinnitus research.

Specifically, we are going to help raise awareness of the articles found within the Frontiers Research Topic "Towards an Understanding of Tinnitus Heterogeneity"

How can you help?

Read the articles. Share your favorite ones via your social media accounts.

Are You In to Push Tinnitus Research Forward?

What?

24 editors from a variety of disciplines have gathered together to work on the research topic.

All the articles to be published (approximately 30 before the end of the year) are going to be open access.

This year, Frontiers will award the most active research topic with a $100,000 conference.

The aim is to use this competition as a vehicle to put a spotlight on tinnitus research.


Benefits?

• Unite the community and bring researchers, clinicians and patient organizations closer together. The public will be better informed about scientific progress.
  
  
• Increase awareness of tinnitus and make it more attractive for funding agencies and for the industry to invest more money into research.
  
  
• Make tinnitus research an appealing research topic that attracts the most brilliant scientists.

 

One of the recently published papers featured as part of the Frontiers Research Topic investigates a curative (read: "treatment") approach to tinnitus - the paper can be found here:

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnins.2016.00453/full

The research above follows an earlier study (a clinical trial, in fact) from 2014 where 120 patients were evaluated in a double-blinded control (placebo) based investigation. A statistically significant improvement was observed in that trial. The full-text paper from 2014 is attached.

 

Shared this to all my social media. A problem with this however, is that it might be too technical for the average "social media" user. They might have a hard time in understanding that they need to view the articles in order to generate traffic. I did put some instructions with my posts of course, but I guess it is just mildly interesting (if at all) to the average user without tinnitus or even habituated patients.

 

Conclusions
Our results indicate that peripheral external ear ES changes cortical activity in tinnitus patients. One of the possible mechanisms in which ES influences tinnitus may therefore be a change in the cortical activity present within the left central temporal and frontal regions. However, whether this effect is primary or secondary to auditory system excitation remains to be investigated. Of the various forms of ES presented above, each may play a role in the tinnitus improvement observed in our study.​

I really feel like methods like these are the best path to treatment in regards to a universal solution because the brain is the final destination and there are many different things than can go wrong between the ear and the brain.

Patients with tinnitus in the head, not the ears, were disqualified from the research.​

But I found this part of the study discouraging and this isn't the first time I've seen this. Wondering why this is - somewhere I read that it's because the tinnitus is no longer considered acute and has traveled to the brain. But this is contradictory because for many people it was immediately perceived in the brain. Makes me feel like the brain folks are screwed because so many studies are trying to treat the ear directly.

 

Ordinarily, that might be perceived as good news. However, this decision of extending the deadline also means that the research topic on tinnitus will now be competing against a new set of other research topics - one of which is the following:

http://journal.frontiersin.org/researchtopic/3099/paradigm-shifts-in-neuroscience

For those unaware, in the last 2-3 weeks the above research topic has roughly generated as many page views as the research topic on tinnitus has generated in its entire existence (e.g. about 8 months)! The reason the research topic on Paradigm Shifts in Neuroscience is doing so well is because they have two leading research articles generating a lot of media attention. One of them is this one:

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnsys.2016.00095/full

The researchers have essentially found the algorithm behind intelligence (i.e. intelligence can now be put "on a bottle" if you like). As with anything of this degree of importance, that generates a lot of media attention and page views. So... it will be a tough challenge to compete against that group of researchers for sure. The rankings are now as follows:



If the deadline had not been extended, the research topic on tinnitus would be in 2nd place (instead of the 3rd).

I have personally led the support of the research topic on tinnitus through a series of sponsored campaigns generating about 1,000 ratings on Facebook. I cannot do any more at this point. TinnitusTalk has also contributed significantly to the mission. The rest is therefore up to the worldwide tinnitus community. Social media technology such as Thunderclap could be one option to explore:

www.thunderclap.it

 

The research topic on tinnitus has advanced significantly in the ratings: currently, it is in a solid 2nd place in terms of page views, and, close to catching up with the leading topic ("Paradigm Shifts in Neuroscience"):



A recent publication on stochastic resonance proposes a new explanation for the induction of tinnitus:

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnins.2016.00597/full

The research was based on a cohort of +39,000 patients. Stochastic resonance allows a person to hear better than is actually possible, but, the downside is the generation of "internal noise" which can become a problem after worsening hearing thresholds from auditory insults (e.g. attending a concert). The research paper also looks at the shape of audiograms in tinnitus patients and the distribution of two sets of neurons in the cochlear (which helps explain why high frequency hearing loss is more likely to occur).

This - the new model for induction of tinnitus - is a potentially quite important finding.

 

Besides being in the lead, the research topic on tinnitus has reached another important milestone this weekend: 250,000 pageviews...



The milestone is reached as "Tinnitus Awareness Week 2017" kicks off tomorrow. Roughly 20 more articles will be published in the first half of 2017 thereby bringing the total to about 50 or so. Most likely the number of contributing authors will surpass 200 by the end.

The link to the research topic can be found here:

http://journal.frontiersin.org/researchtopic/4725/towards-an-understanding-of-tinnitus-heterogeneity

 

We should add a huge thank you to all of the visitors to Tinnitus Talk, on here and on social channels, that helped make this happen. We've been able to orchestrate a big impact on the metrics, it is your effort that has put tinnitus at the top of the tree.

It's fantastic to have been able to play our part as patients and influence the topic.

You will also see an article co-authored by us as part of the research topic, appearing soon.

We're already planning more research work and we will be involved with the Frontiers project as it continues to evolve - hopefully into the winning topic and that massively important conference that can bring more attention to tinnitus and the need for more research.

 

@Steve,
Spotted you on Twitter with David Stockdale and Prof David Baguley...

 

I hope that I managed to get the patient side across and build some stronger ties with the researchers there. My aim is to be able to make what we do here at TT matter for research. So when we decide to do a survey or work on something we can do it with researchers and make sure that it helps to build understanding and the knowledge base for tinnitus.

Laughing at the second picture on the tweets there, I look like I'm unimpressed with something! Think they caught a particularly bad pose.... It went well. I'll write things up when I get the chance. I'm pretty tired, got back home at 1:30am yesterday, after a 2 hour drive from the airport. I can't feel too bad though as David from BTA was on the same flight as me and he had to go straight to a different airport to catch a US flight early this morning.

I think I may need to put a note on a couple of these pics because I look asleep in some of the others.

For the record it was a really good meeting with WG5. I have this unfortunate habit of being caught in pictures at the wrong time

 

Read More​

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This looks promising.

 

Just saw this on Twitter. Could be interesting to get more insights about research that has been conducted by NIHR. Somebody nearby Nottingham who could attend Prof Baguley's lecture and report back?? (@Steve maybe ).

Full link to more information: http://www.hearing.nihr.ac.uk/news/latest-news/article/professor-david-baguleys-inaugural-lecture

 

YES! I Want a Tinnitus Cure!

 

@Steve, have you posted surveys in the Tinnitus Hub on Facebook? There are a ton of active people there that would take surveys I think.

If you have and I am mistaken, my apologies.

 

I suppose that like me you saw the big winner of the Frontiers Spotlight Award 2017:

https://blog.frontiersin.org/2017/0...telligence-wins-first-annual-spotlight-award/

I can't remain in silence, I feel compelled to share with you my disappointment about the human race. Indeed, it seems like people are more interested in brain augmentation (they want more and more, they look for the feat, they probably want to be more effective at work...) than in the idea of curing any disease (not just tinnitus, but also Parkinson's, Alzheimer's...), in short, by the idea of eliminating suffering and regaining the joy of life serenely.

How sad it is (in my humble opinion).

 

Seems we weren't even in the top 10. All the topics were just stuff that appealed to the masses like "How can math improve our society!" or "How video games is exercise for your brain!." Nothing tackling real life issues or problems.

I guess this is good for helping them get viewers and notoriety. A big shame for people actually suffering from real problems. Well I can't blame them. I never thought about advancing healthcare and addressing health problems until... I actually had health problems.

 

Why do we have to register with Frontiers? The login is difficult and asks too many personal ID questions for me to be comfortable registering. Any feedback on this?

 

I thought someone would have beaten me to it, but... it seems not to be the case: the research topic on tinnitus heterogeneity has now surpassed the magic one million views mark. Pretty incredible milestone.



See more via: www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/4725/towards-an-understanding-of-tinnitus-heterogeneity

 

Thanks to everyone here on Tinnitus Talk and people on our social channels we have helped the research topic of tinnitus become the number 1 topic on Frontiers!

I believe it is now the most viewed ever!

This is massive. The condition that we all agree has far too little exposure is now the single biggest topic. Tinnitus is in line to win the conference and get a huge amount of exposure.

Most of this work is due to the talents of @Markku.

He has produced a ton of high quality videos and managed the social media to get the maximum number of people possible to read the articles and push up the numbers.

 

Dr. Christopher R. Cederroth from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published an article about the fact that the tinnitus topic on Frontiers gained more than 1 million views in a relative short period:

https://blog.frontiersin.org/2017/10/24/frontiers-research-topic-tinnitus/

Interesting read that shows the power of 'open source' research and the importance of community driven initiatives (like Tinnitus Talk which also is mentioned in the article).

 

Watch @Steve discuss our collaboration with Tinnitus Research Initiative and TINNET to highlight the important work of tinnitus researchers. There are two approx one-second long tinnitus tones early on in the video. Keep your volume in check.

Research Topic on Tinnitus

Visit the research topic!

 

So does this mean they won?

 

Great video @Steve and @Markku!