New University of Michigan Tinnitus Discovery — Signal Timing

New Dr. Susan Shore update!

Cochlear nucleus small cells use olivocochlear collaterals to encode sounds in noise

Yet to be peer reviewed.

She doesn't mention tinnitus upfront, neither in the title nor the abstract, BUT it does appear deeper in the text as well as hyperacusis! That's a surprise.

The connections she references to tinnitus and hyperacusis are very interesting and become clearer if we take a look at the paper she cites:

Increased contralateral suppression of otoacoustic emissions indicates a hyperresponsive medial olivocochlear system in humans with tinnitus and hyperacusis

That's all!

I must say I don't know what the hell this means, is it good is it bad? You tell me!

(Seriously, I don't understand scientific papers).

 

Glad to see she is still producing real research for the good of our community... I just hope something comes from it.

 

Is this related to Dr. Shore's device?

 

I haven't read the scientific paper, but I don't think so.

I am also impatiently waiting for news about Shore's device, as I have no confidence in Lenire.

 

As I see it this is the soonest treatment that may be made available to us, maybe even available next year. How can there be no updates and tea leaf reading in this thread?

 

I wait every single day for news from Susan Shore's device but there is none

 

This treatment is my gap filler of hope until Neuralink. I hope so much that Susan Shore is gonna make it. If not her then Elon.

 

I also wonder why Dr. Shore's device takes so long! What the hell is the reason. There are people suffering so badly out there.

 

COVID-19 and good science I think. I know they shut down their clinical trials for a year when COVID-19 broke out and from reading her papers and listening to some of her talks she is a proper academic researcher doing proper academic research and these things are much more about doing a good job than a fast job.

I wonder what the chances are of Tinnitus Talk Podcast interviewing her.

 

You know if something could just manage my symptoms, let’s say dial the tinnitus volume down by 50%, it would still be audible basically 24/7 but I think it would be low enough for me to ignore it. It doesn’t have to be perfect to make a massive difference in my quality of life.

 

If you get a choice of timing I wonder if it would be best to interview her after she has results to talk about.

 

I wouldn’t wait. She may pass away before she has results to share!!!

(Sorry. I couldn’t help myself.)

 

If her research helps, her device is approved and helps those of us with subjective or somatic tinnitus I would wait another 10 years. A 50% reduction in tinnitus could be life changing for many. It doesn’t have to go away completely.

 

Knowing that there is something that would help me manage my tinnitus should it get even worse in the future for whatever reason would be major. It's bad as it is, but the idea of it worsening and not having anything to help is terrifying. Plus as you said, even a 50% reduction would be life changing. I can live with a little bit of tinnitus.

 

The winds of Tinnitus
~Susan R.R. Shore.

 

Completely agree. It's the idea of it getting worse that I worry about. If it was frozen or whatever so it never gets any worse, that would be good enough for me. Though of course, a reduction or elimination would be amazing.

 

I have the opposite reaction, I can’t imagine it becoming worse in any meaningful way so at least that is one thing I don’t have to worry about.

That being said this is the one technology that is potentially close enough to reality that I tell myself that maybe in the next 2 years there is a chance that some meaningful decrease in my symptoms might be possible.

 

Everyone here realizes Dr. Shore's device is only intended to work for people who have somatic tinnitus, correct?

Please, if I’m wrong, let me know.

 

No, that’s just her trial criteria. She is unsure if it works for everyone but she does it’s the same fusiform cells, whether it’s from either ailment. The problem comes from the same place in the brain.

 

My real concern is about the limitations of the sound portion of the treatment. Not too unusual for a middle-aged person, my hearing at 14-16 kHz is ‘meh’ (technical term). If they need to match the audible stimulation to the pitch of ultra high pitch tinnitus I wonder what the hearing threshold would need to be for treatment.

 

Sorry being a downer here, but I have not much hope that Dr. Shore's device will be available soon.

Neuromod published a product in much less time. OK, it is not really working.

But what is so difficult about getting Dr. Shore's device finished? They have been doing tests and trials forever. And no one even knows about any intermittent results?

How many years do we still have to wait? Is that so complicated that it takes a decade to finish such a product?

Just my thoughts... We all live in hope that the device will work. But is there any evidence? Please let me know.

 

I think right now the hope lies in the strong results from her first trial. Very convincing results with a 6 weeks treatment and 6 weeks sham with a a washout period in between. There were 2 groups, 1 got the placebo first, the other got the treatment first. In both groups real improvements including a decrease in volume and harshness only occurred with the treatment (10% of patients reported silence). The other piece that gives hope in her device is that she really knows what she is doing and trying to do with this treatment. I've read some of her papers and watched some of her lectures and it is so far above my head I really don't understand it, but she does.

On the other hand her study had only 20 patients and she shut down her current study for an entire year due to COVID-19.

It is worth reading the original paper, I just did the other day and it made me hopeful.

 

Dr. Shore's device has shown significant promise in early trials. The reason why Neuromod made it to market before UofM device is because one is for profit and the other is institutional. The mechanism by which they operate are different, not to mention the red tape. I know that it’s taking forever and a day but there is likely good reason for it beyond just the bureaucratic process.

 

This keeps on coming up but it seems to have more to do with Shore intentionally limiting scope than the odds of it working more broadly. Frankly, I just don't see the rationale for her feeling that neuromodulation would only work for somatic tinnitus.

 

Can anyone share the link to the study? I want to know when the research will end and the results will be published.

 

Well, you should make her explain her rationale then.

 

I can't find any paper detailing her ongoing study, just the one published in 2018. There is a fair bit of detail about her ongoing study on ClinicalTrials.gov.

I think from prior discussions it is anticipated that this current study will be finishing up towards the end of this year and she has certainly made a number of public statements about wanting to move aggressively to marketing her device if the results are positive.

I think aside from that it is a bit of a black hole at the moment.

 

They recruited a particular kind of tinnitus sufferer for their study: those who can temporarily alter their symptoms if they clench their jaws, stick out their tongues, or turn or flex their necks. These maneuvers, Shore says, appear to be self-discovered ways of changing the activity of fusiform cells—providing an external somatosensory signal to modulate their tinnitus.

One thing to remember in her study was the guinea pigs, who obviously had noise induced tinnitus, had their tinnitus suppressed with the timing of the bimodal device. She believes any tinnitus is from one area, and it can be helped through noninvasive methods is her goal.

The question is how much hearing do you have to have to hear the sounds, or do you just have to feel the vibration? Only she knows what’s been working in this last trial.

 

For this study the exclusion criteria is:

• No greater than a mild hearing loss up to 6 kHz, and no greater than a moderate hearing loss at the tinnitus frequencies.

I don't know if this is necessarily going to be a hard limit in a commercialized product.