Neuroscientists Identify Brain Mechanism Responsible for Tinnitus, Chronic Pain

And don't forget 4 weeks ago, also discovered new channels involved with t. HCN channels

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-08/uops-pti082715.php

The thread about it is on TT https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...ce-to-tinnitus-potential-drug-theraphy.10872/

SO COMPLICATED more and more every month!

So many channels are involved in t codition, I am afraid that Autifony's job just on potassium Kv 3 is gonna be effective just in small number of people, and for other maybe little decrease in t. volume

 

This isn't what they meant. They meant that the parts of the brain responsible for tinnitus/chronic pain persistance are associated with higher cognitive processes.

Not at all. It could very well be that the Kv channels are the faulty breakers when it comes to T noise.

 

SF34 and aut63 are working on different Kv channels. Do you mean that one of them is gonna be "a winner", or SF drug will work for someone, and AUT for others? As I see it seems to have a logic...

 

As well as, those of us with obsessive compulsive tendencies, control issues and perfectionism. For me, If I hear any phantom noises in my head, I'll never be truly happy. My mind is not capable of accepting anything less than peace and quiet, to be able to concentrate and focus. Just the fact that I can never get away from it, or know what it will do at any given moment, blows all the circuit breakers in my head. It's overwhelming to me. It's life threatening stuff!

 

I think you just solved the mystery of tinnitus...

 

I sure hope the people involved in this study are aware of the Kv channels implications when it comes to hearing/tinnitus.

I guess we'll know more if AUT00063 or SF34 have any effect at all.

 

I think they are aware but dont want to admit it. Tinnitus "research" is their bread and butter.
My dad work for an R&D department in the manufacturing industry and he told me that buying more time was standard practice to keep his job until finally the company went bankrupt. So yeah it's not the independent researchers working for universities that will find the cure, its the pharmaceutical companies like Autifony that are interested to make money off of cure.

 

In the past (last 15-20 yars), has it happened that university has found some important cure, that was resolving some worldwide health problem?

And if they have, how they hit the market, selling formula to some pharmaceutical comany, or?

 

Im sure that universities contributed to many cures, but not to tinnitus lol because there is so limited budget for it, as opposed to Aids or Cancer resesrch...after all it's the pharmaceutical companies that sponsor projects.

 

I feel this is fairly standard practice in the R&D sector. A past advisor of mine once was approached by company for a particular problem. My advisor knew the solution right away but in order to keep his staff employed he asked for funding to do some work. The company obliged.

Sometimes that's just how you have to do things.

 

I certainly hope they have a greater understanding than what is explained in the article.

 

It's most likely the other way around. When hearing damage occurs, the brain is getting fed less sensory input. In the long term, parts of the brain receiving less stimulation wither and die leading to potential cognitive problems.

The brains needs constant information to function properly.

 

http://www.sciencealert.com/scienti...the-answer-to-what-causes-ringing-in-the-ears

 

Has anyone seen this yet, found it on my facebook
Frontostrial Gating of Tinnitus...It's on cell press Oct 2015 and its listed in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, if I knew how tro bring it hear I would my pc skills not so good
try cell.com Volume 19, issue 10 pages 567-575
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2015.08.002, its the most promising read i read in a while
and open the 2mb file good read!!!!

 

internet is flooded with this new info ... here is another one ... I think I have read the same article in 5 different forms already


http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/new-hope-for-people-with-tinnitus-092515.html

 

why?

 

hi guys

anyone have tried levodopa for tinnitus and/or chronic pain already?

because the study seems to sugest it could help and/or any serotonergic(=producing serotonin)

thanks

 

so noone have tried levodopa?

 

"...advances in brain imaging and associated techniques have enabled researchers to begin homing in on their structural and functional bases, revealing what appears to be a central gatekeeping system implicated in both chronic pain and tinnitus."

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-09/tuom-rit091715.php

"...feelings relating to chronic pain and ringing in the ears are coming into the brain through the same neural 'gate' - a discovery that could eventually point medical scientists towards a cure. Advancements in brain scanning technology and the refinement of other techniques meant Rauschecker and his colleagues were able to look more closely at tinnitus-related brain activity than ever before.

The researchers believe that damage to the gatekeeping areas can affect information flow to the brain and create a self-perpetuating loop - a ringing noise that doesn't go away. They admit there's still a long way to go, and a lot of questions to answer, but it looks like tinnitus sufferers might finally see some light at the end of the tunnel."

http://www.sciencealert.com/scienti...the-answer-to-what-causes-ringing-in-the-ears

 

The light at the end of the tunnel is a train about to crush you ...

 

When? In 10 years? 20 years maybe? I'm not interested then. Now I will have suffered too much for too tinnitus and be "saved" by the brain to suppress it.

I see many studies, news, research, discoveries of neural networks involved ... but only that. There is nothing else.

It is much more that tinnitus is unknown than is known. Approximately 75% - 25%.

 

Background sources from the research community have indicated to me that there is not going to be much novelty in terms of research when the paper is released in October. Attached a paper from 2011 by the same author.

attheedgeofscience
08/OCT/2015.

 

Thanks, ATEOS. Yeah, I am no scientist, but don't see a lot new here. Think it mostly is a testament to the serious PR machine these guys have that managed to get a bunch of reporters to seize on this "new" research.

 

Don't know if it has been posted yet, but here is the link to the paper: http://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/abstract/S1364-6613(15)00179-5

I've been very perplexed by the attention this has received as evidenced by the number of different links that have shown up here touting this paper. Neither the title of the paper nor the abstract state that they have identified the brain mechanism responsible for chronic pain and tinnitus though this is how the paper is described in a number of the links people have posted. (Not faulting anyone who has posted links.)

As most people here probably know, there's nothing novel about relating tinnitus and chronic pain. For example, http://journals.lww.com/otology-neu...ties_Between_Chronic_Pain_and_Tinnitus.7.aspx
It's also not news that there are changes in grey matter associated with tinnitus. See, for example, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811909001414

What seems to be new in this paper relative to the 2011 paper posted by attheendgeofscience is the addition of chronic pain to that earlier paper's framework or methodology. I haven't read the literature on T and chronic pain so maybe this new insight is novel and important, but it does seem like the hype is bigger than the substance. Naturally, I would love to be wrong and have this finding be the key that unlocks everything....

 

Hi all, this is copied and pasted from my Introduce Yourself post. I thought it was more relevant here:

So there's a combination of peripheral ear damage and "something else" in the brain that causes T. For me it is clear that it's not all in the head, I always had ear symptoms (fullness) before spikes or relapses. But why us? what do we have in common that makes us hearing it loud? Of course we don't know yet for sure, but if you have time read the recent article from Rauschecker et al about the common neural abnormalities found in T-sufferes and chronic pain sufferers. There's a thread in TT, under Research News. It was published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences in Sept. 2015, and the full-text is available.
What at first scared me by reading it, is that they say a constant finding in both groups of patients is grey-matter loss (in the case of T in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex) in voxel-based MRI studies. That sounds bad, isn'it'? like when brain tissue is gone it's gone forever, so T forever? And indeed some authors have compared T to a neurodegenerative disorder.
But the authors of this article don't agree, they say that grey matter loss in MRI studies is very often expression of neuronal plasticity, wich under certain circumstances may be reversible.
As for the causes of this grey-matter loss, they cite stress as the major culprit. There is enough evidence that T patients have an abnormal stress response, as evidenced in other studies by dexamethasone suppression tests.
As for possible strategies for reversibility, they mention restoring sleep patterns and putative strategies to facilitate neuronal plasticity.

All my T spikes/relapses (but funnily not the onset episode) came at periods of intense stress for me, in particular in periods when I had to change jobs (and town, home, etc.).

 

Neuroscientists reveal the brain malady responsible for tinnitus, chronic pain Published on September 24, 2015 at 5:42 AM Neuroscientists at Georgetown University Medical Center and Germany's Technische Universität München say they've uncovered the brain malady responsible for tinnitus and for chronic pain — the uncomfortable, sometimes agonizing sensations that persist long after an initial injury. In the October issue of Trends in Cognitive Sciences, researchers say identifying the problem is the first step to developing effective therapies for these disorders, which afflict millions of people. None now exist. The scientists describe how the neural mechanisms that normally "gate" or control noise and pain signals can become dysfunctional, leading to a chronic perception of these sensations. They traced the flow of these signals through the brain and showed where "circuit breakers" should be working — but aren't. In both disorders, the brain has been reorganized in response to an injury in its sensory apparatus, says Josef Rauschecker, PhD, DSc, director of the Laboratory for Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition at GUMC. Tinnitus can occur after the ears are damaged by loud noise, but even after the brain reorganizes itself, it continues to "hear" a constant hum or drum. Chronic pain can occur from an injury that often is healed on the outside but persists inside the brain. "Some people call these phantom sensations, but they are real, produced by a brain that continues to 'feel' the initial injury because it cannot down-regulate the sensations enough," he says. "Both conditions are extraordinarily common, yet no treatment gets to the root of these disorders." Areas of the brain responsible for these errant sensations are the nucleus accumbens, the reward and learning center, and several areas that serve "executive" or administrative roles —the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VNPFC) and the anterior cingulate cortex. All of these areas are also important for evaluating and modulating emotional experiences, Rauschecker says. "These areas act as a central gatekeeping system for perceptual sensations, which evaluate the affective meaning of sensory stimuli — whether produced externally or internally — and modulates information flow in the brain. Tinnitus and chronic pain occur when this system is compromised." Other issues often arise in "lockstep" with tinnitus and/or chronic pain, such as depression and anxiety, which are also modulated by the nucleus accumbens, he says. Uncontrollable or long-term stress is another important factor. Ironically, the brain plasticity that produces some of these changes provides hope that this gatekeeping role can be restored, Rauschecker says. Because these systems rely on transmission of dopamine and serotonin between neurons, drugs that modulate dopamine may help restore sensory gating, he says. "Better understanding could also lead to standardized assessment of individuals' risk to develop chronic tinnitus and chronic pain, which in turn might allow for earlier and more targeted treatment," adds Markus Ploner, MD, PhD, a consultant neurologist and Heisenberg Professor of Human Pain Research at the Technische Universität München

http://www.news-medical.net/news/20...dy-responsible-for-tinnitus-chronic-pain.aspx

always point and over... who know which kind of drugs...

 

This makes me optimistic. The brain can be very plastic and adept at retraining itself if properly pushed to do so.

I will certainly be working hard on CBT and mindfulness.

I read a wonderful book called The Brain that Changes Itself. It's full of interesting science and inspiring stories of people whose brains rewired themselves in ways once thought impossible.

 

I feel like the whole brain plasticity thing is just wishful thinking. Brain function certainly cannot be altered easily without external influences of drugs or gene expression. For all I know brain plasticity is the reason tinnitus occurs in the first place. It usually takes a traumatic event for any changes to occur.

 

Well, agree to disagree!

Seriously though, do read the book!

 

@JohnK: i read that book. It is an inspirational read. ☺