Harvard Health: Closing In on Tinnitus Treatments

[Candy]

https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/closing-in-on-tinnitus-treatments

Anyone knowledgeable know what research they are referring to?

Lauer Center scientists are tackling tinnitus in other ways as well.

These researchers have been learning about the underlying biology of the problem. They've been using lab animals to figure out more about the auditory connections lost to age.

They're also researching how to regenerate and restore hearing signals from the ear to the brain. Private biotech companies are investigating this approach, too.

Experimental therapies
Potential tinnitus treatments being studied elsewhere include therapies that aim to "zap" away tinnitus with tiny amounts of electricity. The idea is to minimize the activity of oversensitive brain cells that turn up the background noise.

These experimental therapies — repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) — deliver electromagnetic pulses to the scalp. But be careful if you're offered such a treatment.

"There's no convincing evidence that passing electrical current into your brain is going to make your tinnitus go away. You could make tinnitus worse," Polley cautions.

 

[JohnAdams]

They are behind the 7,8-DHF + Biphosphonate drug.

This is similar to BDNF. I have great hope in this stuff. I think there is a good chance this will help more of us than FX-322.

https://news.usc.edu/trojan-family/new-hearing-loss-treatment-research-usc-harvard/

 

[Candy]

What about this part?
Is this something new?

"We're measuring what makes someone with tinnitus different from someone without tinnitus. Then we use artificial intelligence to find a signature that identifies the presence of tinnitus. Our goal is to identify a physical representation of this phantom sound."

 

[JohnAdams]

What about this part?
Is this something new?

"We're measuring what makes someone with tinnitus different from someone without tinnitus. Then we use artificial intelligence to find a signature that identifies the presence of tinnitus. Our goal is to identify a physical representation of this phantom sound."

I'm actually pretty sick of researchers' focus on trying to find an objective measure for tinnitus.

We can simply open our mouths and say "I have tinnitus".

 

[Candy]

Yeah but wouldn't it be great to see it on a scan, see how pronounced your tinnitus is compared to others'.

It would also pave the way for disability entitlement etc.

If they can see the activity in various areas then they can work on those...

 

[Snake]

I'm actually pretty sick of researchers' focus on trying to find an objective measure for tinnitus.

We can simply open our mouths and say "I have tinnitus".

We need it, it will help us to prove that we have Tinnitus when it comes to disability and it also boosts the research. Pharmas will start to be more serious about researching drugs when they can clearly see the results on paper, not only what the patient says. Patients can be under placebo effect, a scan on paper will not. Also something like this is more detailed because instead of 0 and 1 like "It helped or not" you can see the actual details how much this or that helped in % and also it should be a lot faster to see improvements on paper before the patient will actually feel it.

That's why objective measurement is crucial.

 

[JohnAdams]

We need it, it will help us to prove that we have Tinnitus when it comes to disability and it also boosts the research. Pharmas will start to be more serious about researching drugs when they can clearly see the results on paper, not only what the patient says. Patients can be under placebo effect, a scan on paper will not. Also something like this is more detailed because instead of 0 and 1 like "It helped or not" you can see the actual details how much this or that helped in % and also it should be a lot faster to see improvements on paper before the patient will actually feel it.

That's why objective measurement is crucial.

I can't believe that, in the face of newly discovered drugs that regenerate synapses and hair cells, any time is being wasted on anything else.

 

[Snake]

I can't believe that, in the face of newly discovered drugs that regenerate synapses and hair cells, any time is being wasted on anything else.

Researching objective measurement methods by one team of researchers will not slow down Frequency Therapeutics nor other researchers in the regenerative medicine. They are basically other fields of medicine, independent of each other.

Remember that regenerative medicine is still not an endgame for us, it will help us a lot and I'm waiting too but we're still going to need to be careful about our hearing and everything with strong PTSD. First the most crucial thing is to free us from this noise of course as fast as possible and reclaim our lives (and save a lot of lives too ) that's why a lot of us are hyped about it but the endgame is to make tinnitus non-existent, not possible to appear again. And even if it appears then destroy it easily, to free us from this fear that it's going to get worse by stupid accident (because now it's our reality where one single accident can make tinnitus a lot worse than before and it shouldn't be like it if we want to be "normal" again)

And objective measurement allows the researchers to see the data clearly, this and that helped when x and y happened etc. It's a lot more data than 0 and 1, you can basically track how tinnitus behaves while doing "something" and then easily compare the results with other teams because this objective measurement is standardized.

 

[ajc]

Researching objective measurement methods by one team of researchers will not slow down Frequency Therapeutics nor other researchers in the regenerative medicine. They are basically other fields of medicine, independent of each other.

Remember that regenerative medicine is still not an endgame for us, it will help us a lot and I'm waiting too but we're still going to need to be careful about our hearing and everything with strong PTSD. First the most crucial thing is to free us from this noise of course as fast as possible and reclaim our lives (and save a lot of lives too ) that's why a lot of us are hyped about it but the endgame is to make tinnitus non-existent, not possible to appear again. And even if it appears then destroy it easily, to free us from this fear that it's going to get worse by stupid accident (because now it's our reality where one single accident can make tinnitus a lot worse than before and it shouldn't be like it if we want to be "normal" again)

And objective measurement allows the researchers to see the data clearly, this and that helped when x and y happened etc. It's a lot more data than 0 and 1, you can basically track how tinnitus behaves while doing "something" and then easily compare the results with other teams because this objective measurement is standardized.

Absolutely. Can't understand how @JohnAdams doesn't understand the basic principles of science. This is 101, you need to be able to objectively measure.

 

[EDDTEKK]

Objective measurement of tinnitus would be much more helpful in animals than humans. Animals can't talk but we can. That's the crucial difference.

It sounds that researches can't find a cure or treatment before they are able to measure it, but this should not block them to search further for treatments.

Of course objective measurement would eliminate all the unnecessary psychological questionnaires which they have to analyze.

 

[Kratos]

"There's no convincing evidence that passing electrical current into your brain is going to make your tinnitus go away. You could make tinnitus worse," Polley cautions.

Yep, @snow86's T was worsened permanently by rTMS.

 

[Mathieulh]

Yeah but wouldn't it be great to see it on a scan, see how pronounced your tinnitus is compared to others'.

It would also pave the way for disability entitlement etc.

If they can see the activity in various areas then they can work on those...

You already can, it's called a fMRI, it turns out the noise is actually real as far as your brain and auditory cortex are concerned, and therefore measurable. That's nothing new, neurologists have known this for years. fMRI are expensive to conduct, but the science does exist and has demonstrated the noise isn't just a psychological trauma, which makes this research pointless.

I shall add that cMRI on the other end, are enough if performed prior or early onset of tinnitus and months after onset, then compared, to notice a visible shrinkage of the nucleus accumbens, which occurs in direct correlation to chronic noise exposure (due to the deregulation of dopamine receptors), this is the so called "habituation" process, which is actually not psychological in nature, but physiological and a result of a brain adaptation performed to cope with the repetitive noise.

Yes, you read that right, chronic noise exposure performs both physical and chemical changes to your brain. All of which are measurable to some degree.

Science has not determined at this time what kind of side effects (if any) occur from these changes. Because these changes are gradual and happen over the course of several months, those are hard to determine and are usually not noticed by the patient (other than the tinnitus not being as obnoxious as before).

I shall add that this process does not happen to everyone, and is preconditioned to the noise being processed through the prefrontal cortex (as opposed to the amygdala, which typically happens during early onset), this makes cMRI possibly inconclusive for a minority of tinnitus sufferers, fMRI however, never lies.

P.S. fMRI stands for functional MRI, cMRI stands for Contrasted MRI. fMRI are only performed on rare occurrences as they are more expensive to produce than cMRI (which are the most frequent types of MRI being conducted)

 

[JohnAdams]

Absolutely. Can't understand how @JohnAdams doesn't understand the basic principles of science. This is 101, you need to be able to objectively measure.

I'm sorry. What is your educational background? Science related I'm sure?

 

[Candy]

Thanks for the info, I have seen images of tinnitus affected brain areas, so the fMRI is what would have been used I guess.

Why then is this not considered an effective tool and researchers often talk about there not being biomarkers etc.?