If you listen to Dirk De Ridder's recent episode on the Tinnitus Talk Podcast, he talks about how psychedelics may work to cure tinnitus. His theory suggests that you need a dose strong enough to dissolve the self. Perhaps that could be accomplished with microdosing if coupled with meditation or something else also working to quiet down the default mode network, but likely not with microdosing alone.
Here's the link to Dirk's interview. Transcript available. I included an excerpt germane to this discussion below.
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/podcast/episode/tinnitus-ingrained-in-the-brain-dirk-de-ridder/
Dirk: Now if this is correct, then what it means is that you first have to detach those connections again. You have to break the sound generated by the memory by hippocampus auditory cortex PCC with whatever way you can, so we're currently doing studies now in New Zealand to see if we can break these connections with specific stimulation designs and medication.
So, for example, we know that certain psychedelics, whether it's hallucinogens, like ketamine and MDMA, can break those connections specifically within the default mode network within our self-representation. That's also, of course, why if you have a psychedelic experience, you have the feeling that you're not in your body anymore, that everything is changing— that's because you have no reference.
49:25 How to break tinnitus connections
Hazel: Yeah, you can even lose your sense of self entirely in such an experience, which I think is fascinating.
Dirk: So what we're currently trying is—
first of all to dissolve the self by psychedelics and then try to rebuild it without those abnormal connections, so that being said, what it means is that the model, the theoretical model, again creates the theory, the theoretical therapies. The therapies link to the theory, so from a practical point of view,
if this model is correct—thatYou would think that if this the sound becomes part of who you are, we have to dissolve who you are. You can do that with psychedelics, then you have to detach the sound network, meaning the auditory cortex, the parahippocampus from the self, which you can do by creating a noisy stimulation design so that it can't synchronize. If that works, then that should be beneficial, but then you should still try to prevent this from reoccurring because if you have hearing loss, your brain might again try and do that, and that's why then, for example, you might need hearing aids, not to treat the tinnitus, but to prevent it from reoccurring or you might do mindfulness or whatever therapy that teaches your brain to basically say look, the lack of auditory input is not important because then you should not develop the tinnitus again. So, what it means is that if the tinnitus becomes part of who you are, you have to just take another treatment approach. But it's doable, it's just creates a little—it makes it just a little more complex and it also means that you might have to work in different phases rather than what we do now. Now we still think well, we have to treat it all at once. In the future probably that won't happen.
In the future we will think, okay, well, if this is correct, then we have to first detach the sound from the self, then we have to detach the sound from the suffering, which is still another network, and then we have to ultimately prevent it from recurring, and that being said, that will be two or three different sequential treatments rather than the one magic pill or the one approach that treats everything. It does take a different approach, but it's all doable because we better understand those networks and those connections, and we know which medications can work on which of these components.
Member
Trials on just that was done many years ago, which was indeed interesting, good to see research still being done on the subject.
