Zeta Technologies — Professor Alain Londero (Neurofeedback, Virtual Reality)

Shame on me! I realized with the interview of Professor Alain Londero at the TRI 2019 conference:



That I forgot to relay this piece of news:
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03773926
https://medtechengine.com/article/tinnitus-solved-the-french-start-up-that-wants-to-end-the-torment/

Weird thing, the website of the company www.zetatech.fr does not work anymore.

Maybe I am a little bit confused since Zeta Technologies are talking about Neurofeedback whereas Professor Alain Londero is talking about Virtual Reality.

I did not manage to participate in the study since I do not live close to the clinical trial centers (Paris and Toulouse).

See also old links:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10055-009-0135-0
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378595515002488

 

Hello, I have some bits of info about this and specifically on Zeta Technologies.

So basically, the founder of Zeta Technologies, Robin Guillard is kind of active on the French Facebook tinnitus group. This enabled me to know more about the study. I will try to translate with the best of my abilities:

"To quickly summarize, our results from the neurofeedback study were lukewarm. Post-analysis, we found out that we were not able to stimulate enough the brain activity targeted by our therapy on all patients. If some of them showed some results, for others there were no change at all. But we proved meaningfully that people showing more changes in brain activity due to our treatment were also best responders and saw a decline in the severity of there tinnitus. The conclusion is that more work is necessary to refine and improve the efficacy of the treatment"
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Man, I hope this is readable, translating is hard

Good news is that they got a grant of €1M to pursue studies in the next five years. They are currently looking at the link between tinnitus and sleep. Basically, we proceed sounds differently between the different phases of sleep. Sometimes we retain what we hear, sometimes we tune it out - Paper at the basis of their approach: https://bit.ly/2jZ6nrv - Following these discoveries they want to test if presented with sound at precise moments of sleep, the brain can learn to decrease the sound of tinnitus when awake. If french people based in Paris want to proceed with the test here's the link to participate in their trial - https://www.wepi.org/accounts/5aa68...94891156/scripts/connect.php?t=1832528282&s=f - You will need to stay two nights at Hotel Dieu so real emphasis on only participating if you are in Paris at the moment, no need to flood them with unhelpful requests.

I tried to reach them to know why their website was down but no luck there. I know they are still active though because I was not included in their experiment and got a mail in response. I think they are worth following. They are a really small team but they are dedicated and come from Polytechnique (I know school doesn't really determine your worth but in France this is really the best of the best and when attached to a project, kinda puts more credibility to it). They are also backed by the "Fondation pour l'audition" which I see as a good sign.

Welp that's all I got. I know this is just bits and pieces of anecdotal information but thought it was worth posting here.

 

Good stuff. Some people benefiting is still better than no one benefitting. Hopefully they can improve this soon and conduct another clinical trial and eventually get this out there.