New University of Michigan Tinnitus Discovery — Signal Timing

When my tinnitus is loud, I'm able to regulate it with all my face and neck muscles. I wonder if this device works for not just somatic tinnitus like what I have, but other types too, assuming the others are persisted in the DCN.

 

Does anyone know why Dr. Shore excluded people with greater hearing loss than -50 dB from the study?

 

She wanted to make sure that enough stimulation was coming through the auditory system. I would be surprised if that threshold wasn’t raised for the commercial version.

 

Lenire's approach is similar to how hearing aids are customized for an individual's audiogram - they boost the signal where you have a dip to produce a profile that allows you to hear all frequencies at the correct volume. As previously mentioned, their system allows up to 80 dB loss.

For Dr. Shore's device, I suspect it'll be a question of whether you can hear to some extent at your tinnitus frequency and can their audio amplifier boost the signal enough to compensate for the hearing loss so that you're hearing at whatever the therapeutic level needs to be.

Unless a person has severe to profound loss at their tinnitus frequency(s), personally I wouldn't be too worried. And if they were to approve the device only for people with a lessor amount of loss because that's what the trial was run at, I'd be pushing to get my hands on it anyway and take my chances.

 

Once the device is available, I suppose people will have the chance to try the device even if they have profound hearing loss at the specific frequency of their tinnitus. Maybe it can somehow work by targeting neighbouring frequencies or maybe it has a broadband noise setting? Remember they first tested this on animals, who I believe couldn't tell their their exact tinnitus frequency.

 

That's something I never even thought about. I'm concerned as labyrinthitis left me with severe hearing loss in my right ear (75-95 dB from 4000 to 8000 Hz), but normal left ear (0-20 dB).

 

I'm just speculating here to be honest, but so far it is logical to assume so. Also, somewhere above it was being said that Dr. Shore herself said that plastic changes from one ear can happen to both DCN sides in the brain, meaning that treating one ear can possibly affect both sides. It's all assumptions at this point, but the results were very much promising.

 

I think for bimodal stimulation you don't need to hit the tinnitus frequency exactly. It's probably just about getting sound information into the DCN. You don't need to hit the frequency. But I don't know exactly how her device works.

Regarding Dr. Shore having tinnitus; I can't give you a source at the moment I'm afraid. My brain sucked that information in somehow from an interview or so but... I'm not sure. But I’m pretty sure she's got some sort of tinnitus.

 

Remember Dr. Shore told @dj_newark you could use the other ear:

 

Who wants to guess:

• How much will Dr. Shore's device cost
• What year will it be released in

Closest answer gets bragging rights.

 

US in 2024, $4,990
EU in 2025, €4,790
UK in 2025, £3,990
AU in 2097 2026, $7,390

 

US $3,500
EU €3,000
UK £2,800

Released January 2024 universally.

 

No, it only works for somatic tinnitus right now. She says they'll investigate treating other forms of the disorder after the device is released. They'll also continue to refine the device after release so that it works better, faster and for more people.

 

I'm guessing release in US in early 2024 at around the same price point of Lenire, ~$2200.

 

That's nonsense. I've tested Lenire and I'm an absolute anti-Neuromod nerd. The acoustician looked at my audiogram and apparently made some adjustments to the software. Otherwise there are the same senseless sounds like piano, the sound of the sea, other instruments, etc. Complete nonsense, nothing is adjusted to the tinnitus frequency. Determining the tinnitus frequency is a difficult field anyway. So let's not continue the topic here, this is about Dr. Shore.

So I don't think Dr. Shore's device will be that expensive, why should it? It's a bit of electronic stuff, certainly with a long state-funded study phase beforehand. Auricle doesn't care. If Dr. Shore actually has tinnitus herself, she won't have the heart to overprice it.

I am (I know I repeat it from time to time) rather skeptical when it comes to bimodal stimulation methods. Well Dr. Shore's device could help a few, but with 99 participants, chance still plays too big a role for me. I don't think that will do much for the really hard-hit among us.

(I'm the one who predicted the Frequency Therapeutics crash, I just had to change my nickname as I got threats on another forum with the same nickname).

 

Understood re Lenire - I wasn't talking about adjusting to the tinnitus frequency, only amplitude - they do boost the signal at those frequencies where there's hearing loss.

 

I am basing this on nothing but intuition but I feel very confident about this device, almost arrogant levels of confidence. My intuition has been spookily accurate in the past.

 

Your post above may disappoint a lot of hopefulls, but I think it's the healthy attitude to take.

And by the way, I'll be more than happy if it turns out that you are wrong.

I'll believe it when I see it or rather I'll believe it when I don't hear it.

 

My unpopular opinion about cost is that if it actually works, I’ll pay you $10-15K, but it has to work. You have to be willing to bet your mother’s life to me that I am going to get a reduction if you are going to charge that price.

 

I’m trying to understand the difference between Lenire and Dr. Shore’s device, being that both of them work via bimodal (electric/auditory) stimulation?

Is it just the details (e.g., current amplitude, timing between the electric and audio stimulus, etc)?

 

Mine is also more intrusive on the left, and I've heard a lot of people say the same thing. Does this have any meaning or is it just a coincidence?

 

Poll: Which Ear Is Your Tinnitus Worse In? | Tinnitus Talk Support Forum

 

In a presentation I saw by Prof. Dirk De Ridder, statistics seems to indicate that a very small majority has tinnitus in the left ear than the right. He didn't say why but he did say that it's not uncommon for the tinnitus to pop up in the other ear as well after a couple of years. Fortunately for me, that has not happened yet.

 

This can be answered with a quick search on the forum. But basically Lenire is Bluetooth controlled preprogrammed crap with no precise timing tailored for different people and 0 placebo-controlled research.

 

No, they are trying to do opposite things, both using bimodal stimulation. Lenire is trying to broadly stimulate everything in an attempt to lower the perceived noise in the narrow band that you actually experience tinnitus. Dr. Shore's device uses specific timings to calm and desynchronize the hyperactive fusiform cells, thus diminishing the actual tinnitus itself.

Also the best I can tell Lenire took the throw spaghetti at the wall theory of development, while Dr. Shore went from theory to basic research, to animal testing, to human testing.

 

I wonder if those of us in the United States can start putting money into a pre-tax health account in order to help save for the device. Will we be able to pay for the device/treatment via our pre-tax savings account?

Does anyone know anything about Auricle's funding and developing the device for mass production? I have a bit of faith in Dr. Shore as she seems like an honest academic, but now that businessmen are entering the conversation, my worries escalate a bit. I don't want this to be like the Nintendo Power Glove where the prototype was amazing, but the final product was cheap garbage.

 

Regarding comparisons between the way Lenire works as opposed to the UMich device this short article in "Twisted Sifter" actually summed up the basic differences pretty well.

Richard Tyler made some past comments regarding Neuromod's lack of control and these are included in the article too. At the very least, Susan Shore has negated herself from such doubt.

 

Anyone agree with this?

if the cure rate is less than 50%, it's not worth that much.

50-80% and you'd pay a decent amount of change for a chance.

And a certain 100% cure, you'd drop an exponential amount more.

 

No doubt you guys have just received the email from Susan Shore. There's not really much in there we don't already know but promising stuff that her lab is communicating directly with subscribers:

 

Great to see it moving forward - I hope Auricle are capable of building what's needed to bring it to market in a timely fashion. FDA approval and building the device have reasonably deterministic timelines, it's getting the funding and building out the organization, infrastructure, relationships, commercial agreements, training programs, software tools for programming, etc that'll take all the time. As mentioned before, a partnership or licensing agreement with Neuromod (Lenire), who have all this but not the underlying technology, would be by far the quickest and most effective way to bring this to market but how likely is that?

It may have changed but last time I looked, Auricle was a one-person organization, so I'm very interested to see how and when the funding and people are going to come from to make it all happen (currently they only have $350K of debt financing).

Keeping an eye on this is a good way to assess progress.