Inner Ear Hair Cell Regeneration — Maybe We Can Know More

Fleeting tinnitus isn't a good sign by the way,I seen a study where they measured fleeting T in non T patients and in T patients,apparently it happened much more often and much more aggressively in the T patient than the healthy patient.Just throwing it out there,see a lot of people saying stuff like"ohh that's healing occurring"when it isn't the case.")

Also Mike I congratulate you on getting your implant and hope things go well for you,I've even seen stories of people claiming their T vanished whilst the implant was on so here's to hoping the same for you.

 

The damaged synapses may explain why residual inhibition works for some people. I don't know the stats, but I suspect that those that have "normal hearing" and still have T may respond to residual inhibition while those that have lost hair cells don't respond to it.

 

I got "perfect hearing" and have never ever experienced residual inhibition.

 

Well there goes that theory...

 

I have noise induced hearing loss at 4k... same place as my main T frequency. If I play a 4k note on my headset, it causes residual inhabitation and when I turn the note off my T is suppressed for 5-10 seconds.

 

Then what is it a sign of according to you? I've seen many fantastic proposals of what this phenomena might be. Among them:

• Recalibration of the inner-ear sensory cells by the brain in one way or another.
• Recalibration of the inner-ear fluids.
• The death of hair cells.

Personally, if for example failing interaction between a still living hair cell and a damaged synapse turns out to be one of the etiologies of Tinnitus, I'd rather have those hair cells killed off ASAP. If that is the case fleeting Tinnitus would be good news in my book. It's not exactly "healing" in that case, but getting rid of or reducing Tinnitus would be the next best thing. Assuming the fleeting Tinnitus is associated with loss of hair cells and you consider that bad news of course...

But hey, what do we really know about fleeting Tinnitus and whether it is good or bad? All we have is theories and speculation.

 

@Vinnitus
The research that I follow is mainly by Libermann and the likes as it's the research that I personally believe to be on the right track.

But look at it this way,normal healthy people experience fleeting T,their cochlear aren't damaged so why would healing take place in a non damaged cochlea?Theres nothing to heal.

Next why do people with T from noise exposure experience it more often and more severe than those who don't suffer from noise induced T?If it's healing then why does the normal population experience this from time to time with no hearing issues whatsoever?
To me and I speak personally here it's a sign of inner ear strain,a warning sign to some degree.

My evidence is anecdotal but the studies are more conclusive than anything I can say.
At the moment two of my friends have reported fleeting T to me,one is a girl who experiences it very rarely out of nowhere but notes that if she's out in a noisy pub or something similar she will experience it at least twice in the coming weeks.The other is a guy who experiences fleeting T after being around noisy environments,he doesn't experience it immediately but usually in the weeks that follow,it doesn't happen everytime but more often than not.

Lastly I had a conversation with a nice man who has T,I don't know him personally but we know each other to see around.Ine day he spotted my earplugs and asked me what it was all about so I explained the whole T and H thing to him and that's how he revealed he too had T.
What was interesting about his story was how it started,it started with occasional bouts of fleeting T when one day the fleeting T stayed for good and that was 4 years ago now.Hes a musician so his noise exposure risk is apparent.

That's my take on things at least,what actually causes the fleeting T in a physical sense is anyone's guess,whether it be auditory neurons getting excited or irratated or haircells beginning to die I can't say for certain but in my opinion it's auditory synapses beginning to degenerate or become strained,the more and more strained they are eventually they become damaged and that's when T shows up.

If I'm honest,I don't think for one second that haircells themselves have anything to do with T,it's what's underneath that causes this but that's just my theory on things,not a fact just a theory.

 

What is residual inhibition?I've heard the term before but never really understood it?

 

It's when you hear a particular sound, if you stop it, your T stops too for a few seconds. Like if your brain was "fed" by the external noise matching your T : the brain hears the sound, thinks it's T, stops producing T, before it realizes it wasn't and resumes T. That's how I understand residual inhibition.

 

Exactly! It's quite easy to check as well. Match you freq and tone and listen to it reasonably loudly for 60 seconds min and suddenly stop it! I use the whist app.

 

Whats residual inhibition ?

Never mind, i just read it

 

Its the theory behind ACRN Neuro Modulation,

 

I second the sentiment that temporary/fleeting tinnitus isn't "normal." I've experienced it a handful of times since I got T, but NEVER before. It is something I would've noticed even before T.

 

I´ve had it my whole life. Very randomly indeed, Noticed it more frequently after my last AT though which developed my T(eg, made it alot worse)

 

Sounds like quackery to me lol maybe it works for some but it never worked for me and like Lapidus I also have"normal"hearing.

 

Nothing new but hidden hearing loss
is getting more media recognition
http://www.scientificamerican.com/a...etecting-hidden-hearing-loss-in-young-people/

 

I've got 2 tones of T.... 4kz where my hearing loss is and 13.5khz. I can play a tone at 4khz and when I turn the tone off I don't have any T at that level anymore for 5-10 secs. I can do the same thing at 13.5khz. If I do them both one right after the other I get 5-10 seconds of silence. Note that it has to be fairly loud to work. My computer speakers don't cut it. I need to use headphones.

 

Dude, don't listen to loud sounds. You seem to have killed a lot of hair cells and/or nerve endings already to cause the T. Listening to loud music/sounds might easily add more to what you have. Take care.

 

Well, at least they appear to have developed a "set of diagnostic tools" to diagnose hidden hearing loss. Thats an important step in the right direction.

I dont like the last sentence though; "He points out that tools to diagnose hidden hearing loss—such as those developed by Maison’s team—would be essential for testing such therapies and detecting damage at an early stage when it is more treatable."

Seems we are dealing with a "window of opportunity" again, limited by time constraints. That might or might not be bad news for current sufferers...

 

Residual inhibition is very real. The mechanism is unknown but it is a known phenomenon. I know from personal experience.

 

Used to get fleeting T before my T (a few seconds). I used to assume the fleeting T was a result of my ears being prone to ETD and that everyone got it.
My mum gets fleeting T quite often, she is 67 never got T though. Also don't listen to music, go to concerts etc. am a very boring mum...My T was caused by a loud everyday situation (one particular day) at least that is my main lead. Was I more prone because of my fleeting T indicating something was degenerating? In which case why don't I have any detectable hearing loss? Doesn't make sense, surely acoustic trauma causes some hearing loss.
Do you think my Jaw could be the cause and then the fleeting T was just a coincidence?

 

No worries... not that loud... much less loud than a nightclub or a concert. Maybe a little less than the average movie theatre... but the noise lasts 10 seconds not 2 hours... and the effect doesn't last long enough to bother doing it for therapy, so it's really only something I play with a couple times a week. 30-60 seconds of movie theatre level noise spread out over a week shouldn't kill any more hair cells I hope.

 

It is now proven that older persons with hearing loss are risking dementia, and there are many many older persons with hearing loss. There might be a honey pot for two markets : deafness (+tinnitus) cure and euthanasia. Hopefully the first overcome the second ! And therefore if efficient tools are used to cure advanced hearing loss affecting generally both haircells and neural zones, it seems logical that even younger people with hidden hearing loss might benefit from the same path for beeing cured in smaller amounts. Current hearing tests will eventually become obsolete and I believe that even people with hidden hearing loss will more or less be considered like current patients with damages shown on current audiograms. Unless hearing aid sellers lobby sneakily in order to continue to sell their junk.

 

Nah, Sometimes writers just add words and setences that doesnt have any scientific value.
i wouldnt stress about that, lets just hope its treatable at all.

 

Well maybe sure but I'm never convinced by any of this stuff,there's just so many"treatments"for T now claiming all sorts of things that never really lived up to the hype.When I'm around noise my T gets quieter and then ramps back up again when I sit in silence so maybe there is some merit to it.

 

I remain hopeful. I keep getting back to the cochlear implants. I have not yet seen talk about "window of opportunity". So connections with the implant are still possible after many, many years. At the moment it is still conjecture. Researchers don't yet know well enough and insights keep changing.

 

I want to remain hopeful, but with any ear-related treatment so far, we have been dealing with windows of opportunity.

• Steroids; preferably within 48 hours of trauma.
• Hyperbaric Oxygen; preferably within 3 months of trauma.
• AM-101; was supposed to work the best for acute cases up to 3 months.
• etc.

Would be something if they found a treatment which effectively works for cases till 6 months when you are in your 7th month. Next, few years later they found a treatment that works up to 3 years post trauma, but you are in your 4th year... and so on.

That would be a Tinnitus sufferer's worst nightmare and add insult to injury. I do hope these kind of treatments have a generous time window so that the long-time sufferers won't fall off the board. I'm sure the pace upon which things are researched and developed make a lot of people nervous. It sometimes feels like a knock-out competition.

 

Just a tiny update I got from Audion Therapeutics : their clinical trial is "still in the planning stage" and "news will be released on their website in 2017". I'll try to get more info.

 

Thanks Foncky...

We are waiting for your update.

 

The "window of opportunity" for cochlear implants is much, much longer because the implanted electrode directly stimulates the nerve terminals. While the cochlear implant can provide tinnitus relief for people with profound hearing loss, you might want to think twice about a CI if you have any useful hearing in that ear. For one thing, the payment structure is uncertain and the procedure is fantastically expensive. For another, hearing through a CI is still vastly inferior to acoustic hearing. At this time, at least in the US, CIs are an option for profound hearing loss. Though people are starting to recognize their value for tinnitus relief in single-sided (i.e., one ear) deafness.

The value of the Maison paper (including their new 2016 study in PLoS One, Towards a Diagnosis of Hidden Hearing Loss) is that it provides an objective measure of how people struggle to hear speech in noise even when the audiologist tells them their hearing is normal. The nerve is the most vulnerable element in the inner ear to noise damage, not hair cells. You lose the connection between the nerve terminal and the hair cell, there is indeed a short window to restore that connection (through NT-3 etc.). If that window closes, you could, in theory, stimulate the nerve through a cochlear implant.