Brain's 'Amplifier' Compensates for Lost Inner Ear Function

Clinical evidence of the "gain" being turned up in the cortex to compensate for reduced hearing input.

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-01-brain-amplifier-compensates-lost-ear.html

 

So how do we fix this ?

 

TRT! book an appointment with him today!

 

Depressing

I did TRT with him 2003-2005

 

This article is nothing new, and shouldn't discourage anyone on current treatments being worked on.

 

So anyone who sits inside a soundproof room for a certain amount of time is going to develop tinnitus?
I think Jasterbroff is about as useful to medicine as Josef Mengele.

 

I rest my case.

 

And in 2011 I fell back into hell..Worse hearing, hyperacusis, tinnitus, and misophonia..Back into hell

 

I believe reconnection of the inner ear to the brain or even new connections associated with the correct rewiring of nerves will allow the brain to fix itself. There are documents of stem cell neurons being transplanted into animals and allowing the brain to reduce its gain input tested through Auditory Brain Response tests. It's our best route for healing the lost connections from the inner to the brain unless, the patient has lost a good portion of their outer hair cells and some inner hair cells then a different method like hair cell regrowth would be needed. There are companies working on the hair cell regrowth formulas. About 1-2 I've seen are working on using Neurotropic factors to reconnect synapses in the inner ear which causes tinnitus and this could do wonders for people who just got noise-induced tinnitus. I think the stem cell neuronal route plus neurotropic factors included could be a holy grail cure for tinnitus sufferers and not ion channel adjusters/modulators. I've yet to really read into how the ion channel issue causes tinnitus.

Maybe someone could explain to me?

 

Probably you're referring Potassium Channel Modulator's. The brain tries to compensate the loss of input from cochlea by amplifying the inputs, thus causing T as we all know and the article states. This amplification is done by the neurons, actually by hard working and overly excited neurons. RTG calms down these neurons by reducing their communications through playing with the electrical properties of the medium. This is my simplest explanation.

I agree with you that the correct solution to T & H should be coming from the nerve regeneration realm but it'll take much longer time i assume. In the meantime calming down the neurons does not seem to be a bad fix. If SF0043 manages to come out of the labs and does not have the adverse affects of RTG as advertised.

 

thx !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Thank you for explaining that. How bad is your tinnitus/hyperacusis and what was the cause?

 

Indoor rock concert. My T is mild-moderate i guess, at least i'm not freaked out anymore, no depression, very very little anxiety, moderate annoyance. The T is tending on the mild side after my AM101 injections. The frequencies are 6-7Khz on the right and >10Khz on the left. H is only present when i have T spike.

 

That's great to hear. Depression associated with T is never a good thing.

I really need some help discovering what happened with my hearing though. I don't know who to ask because I've already gone through ENT's/Audiologists/People on here. I had over the summer and 4 months what many people have on this site now but my hearing COMPLETELY changed in the past months. I went through huge stages of depression and not feeling myself and I'm now stuck with no sensation at all from music, a fading memory ability, not feeling like myself, and a very hard time hearing/processing noises around me when multiple things are going on, yet every now and then I play the 20hz-20khz frequency range and I can hear a good 90% of it. I truly think I lost all of my original nerves from noise damage. A study has shown that people with age related hearing loss develop new nerves over time as they lose their original nerves but these new nerves actually cause a disturbance to your original hearing abilities and really age related hearing loss can be sped up drastically by noise-induced circumstances.

I just wish I could get some help on this and some answers but I've only been left behind on this problem that causes me to have so many issues. I've been able to get past having to take anti-depressants by taking a ton of supplements, exercising, and thinking positively about this but I don't know how long my brain/body will be able to take it.

 

Do you have any thoughts on what I could do?

 

You know what, i have a similar feeling towards music. I do not want to listen to music that much anymore. I enjoy quality music still but the fear of it causing a spike is killing my motivation as still my T is highly reactive.

Your condition though, sounds to me like you've lost a good deal of the nerves and with the remaining ones you're able to hear but that's all about it. The brain has to do much more processing to interpret the signals coming from cochlea and come up with something meaningful as the signal's quality is much lower compared to a healthy signal. My guess is it tries to amplify the signal and probably do some post-processing to recover some lost information but during this process it makes a lot of mistakes causing unwanted results. Yeah probably this is why you do not enjoy music anymore, or having hard time with multiple people talking.

Sorry, i cannot think of anything besides nerve regeneration, but as i'm no doctor, my opinions are as valuable as a doctor's trying to fix a software bug.

 

Yeah it seems like my only hope is nerve regeneration through actual neurotropic factors or stem cells differentiated into neurons being transplanted or even both together. Thanks for your opinion and the help. I just really don't like being stuck in this situation where I don't have loud tinnitus like I did many months ago, so I can't relate anymore to people on this site, but then I have all these things happening now as my hearing has changed over these past months.

I just want to be able to relax, experience music emotionally and in the quality I did before, and be able to feel like myself once again. I pray for something before I die. I would do anything to get it back.

 

Probably due to the plastic nature of the brain, you'll habituate to these new information which makes you uncomfortable right now and get used to them. In the mean time, your brain shall learn to perform better amplification. So do not lose hope. We'll all get better.

 

Yes the plasticity of the brain is a wonderful thing but my brain has hit its max point with recovering from my hearing issue. My ability to hear things now is terrible with other noises going on and it seems to be getting worse. I'm also exhausted all the time, have no mood changes whatsoever, and have a much harder time remembering things.

 

I do not see any correlation bw T&H and memory functions. Not remembering thing might be related to your stress and anxiety. You're probably thinking that not remembering things well is causing your anxiety. I believe the opposite, you developed anxiety, this caused decline in a lot of brain functions. So reduce stress&anxiety, do not obsess about future, your brain shall be free and functional again.

 

I'd like to know why I can't enjoy music anymore! (Not towards you but just from a medical professional)

 

I suspect the only way to turn down the gain on the brains amplifier, is to pull out the plug!

 

Or take that knob that says gain on it and turn it to the right a little bit. There, problem solved!

 

Let me know if you find that knob. I've been looking for it for almost 2 years now! };-)

 

Keep in mind that neurogenesis and even basic nerve regrowth (for the ones that regrow) is a very lengthy process. So I wouldn't be so quick to accept that I hit a max point yet if I were you.

I know this is not an exact comparison but when I had severe sciatica from a herniated disc in my back some years ago the neurosurgeon I saw told me that the nerve repaired itself at the rate of 1 - 2 mm a day. And that, she said, might even be an optimistic estimate so I had to be patient. All in all it took almost two years for me to feel normal again.

Granted, auditory nerves are different in that they don't regrow. But that doesn't mean that a neural "work around" isn't being tried by your brain. It just might take more time for it to be noticeable.

 

This one goes to 11.

 

An argument that has appeared many times on TT. But just to repeat:
This article suggests that all t is due to damage of inner and outer hair cells of the inner ear causing hearing loss.
However, t can be caused by so many things, not just noise exposure. Stress alone can cause t. Hormones. The list is endless. Some may say that this can chemically induce hearing loss.
However, many with t test with great hearing. Some even find their hearing more acute with the onset of t.
Also, so many different types of t. Intermittent t for example suggests that this absolute link to hearing loss is not likely.
I have talked with a leading researcher of t at UCSF, and he categorically believes there are many t cases with no relation to inner ear function and/or hearing loss.
Don't forget that the inner ear is the inner most part of the ear.
But the auditory nerve runs from there right through the middle ear and through the cerebral auditory cortex. So anything from middle ear function to somatic sensory or central nervous system etc could possibly trigger t.

 

I would be interested in reading about this. Could you give a link?

 

Funny, that's the volume Clapton said, he'd set his Marshall amps at when Cream played live.

 

I can't find the knob either. Although people call me a knob all the time.