Support Dr. Rauschecker's Tinnitus Research — a Man Who Really Means to Make a Difference

I guess they want to get some money from the public before they fund it. The more money they can hold onto the more money people get paid I guess. This concept is also depressing...

 

Everyone that donated is in this thread... All 5 of us.

 

This is a problem with the tinnitus community at large.

Ask people if they want effective treatments, or a cure, and they will scream ‘YES’.
Ask those same people if they will donate towards research to help make it become a reality and they all go quiet.

The vast majority will spend lots of time complaining (about the lack of treatments) on tinnitus forums but don’t do anything of value to help change this. This is even true when opportunities fall into their laps. It’s quite tragic really, and 9 donors sums the community up in a nutshell.

 

Considering that this is a Jesuit College I would believe anything. It was founded by the Jesuit John Carroll when the Jesuits were an outlawed group. They were actually outlawed by Pope Clement XIV himself in 1773 because they were causing so much international trouble. This Pope died mysteriously a year after this allegedly from poisoning.

They are implicated in starting many wars, involvement in terrorist plots, and the occult. They ran the INQUISITIONS. Torturing people on dungeons. I'm not even remotely joking. And they are very very rich.

Right, why would they need donations? I would gladly donate to this cause because tinnitus is slowly killing me but I simply cannot trust this.

To donate to any Jesuit institution may even be a violation of my own religious morals.

Even looking at Dr. Rauschecker's bio, it looks as if he may even be able to fund this himself. Considering the past history of the Jesuits, I wouldn't be surprised if they are trying to actually disrupt the emerging focus on this disease in order to prolong our suffering. Like a medical inquisition. That's my honest best guess. If I'm wrong oh well.

I know my history and unfortunately, in my perception of Jesuit institutions, their reputation precedes them.

 

My opinion is too severe for this forum.

 

This man is not working on a cure, he is working on a functional model of the hearing system.

For many of us, we pretty much have a good idea that our cochleas are damaged and regeneration of this will more than likely stop tinnitus.

There's already like 5-10 substances that can achieve this but only a few are being tested.

What we NEED is for Frequency Therapeutics to come out and tell us if test subjects are reporting a decrease in tinnitus.

Dr. Rauschecker needs to know this before he spends a single dime because this is a very key piece of information.

 

Personally, I think the community should support research wherever it can. We need a strong testable model for tinnitus where we can collect meaningful data. This will enhance our understanding of the condition, and as a byproduct of this, it will lead to better treatments. It is my understanding that Professor Rauschecker wants to test his hypothesis.

This is the genesis debate and nobody knows the answer. We need more research to better understand the mechanisms behind tinnitus and what keeps it in the brain. Everybody on the planet has cochlea damage so this doesn’t entirely explain why some of us develop tinnitus and some of us don’t. The gating hypothesis suggests something has gone wrong in our brains, and that these noises should be filtered out, but they’re not. There are many hypotheses out there but we need a good working model to better understand what is actually happening. Having a deeper understanding of our condition can only lead to better treatments and possibly even a cure. It’s hard to cure what we don’t understand. Isn’t this what Prof Rauschecker is trying to achieve? Surely it’s worth a $10 investment? Even as a punt.

Secondly, unless someone here is an auditor for Georgetown University, none of us know how the funds are being allocated. However, it’s safe to assume that Prof Rauschecker cannot access this money otherwise he wouldn’t be trying to raise it himself? What kind of madman does that?

If Frequency Therapeutics came out saying they needed to raise funds, I can guarantee that the tinnitus community would be of little help. Based on my experience, I’m not entirely sure what would spring people into action. And remember, I’m not just talking about donating money, I’m talking about giving time by sharing these campaigns on your social media and by spreading the word.

The fact is, people will continue complaining on here whilst helping no one. Take the BTA for example, they get loads of abuse, but at the end of the day they are independently funded. No public (government) money is spent, so it’s not like they’re a drain on society or something. Any help towards the cause is surely a positive; it’s certainly better than having nothing which is what we would be left with.

 

Just out of curiosity, has there been any organizations out there that has made promises of curing tinnitus... and has actually made breakthroughs with the money that was donated to them?

I don't care if they haven't found a cure yet, just that they did something effective that took us one step closer. I will donate to that company, today... right now.

 

Please stop defending the status quo.

 

If you listen to Professor Rauschecker's TED talk he tells about his discovery, in conjunction with a German university 10 years ago, that the ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex of the brains of tinnitus patients was smaller (volume depletion) than in control patients. He also found that the Nucleus Accumbens is hyperactive in tinnitus patients. These 2 areas are part of the limbic system which Rauschecker says form a noise cancellation system in the brain. When this is not working tinnitus occurs. He does a much better job explaining this but that means you would have to invest time to listen to his presentation.

Right now people like Susan Shore are using guinea pigs and others are using rats or mice for tinnitus research. These are all rodents and do not have the higher brain centers found in humans. For that Rauschecker has to go to primates to test his hypothesis. That's pretty expensive, not only to purchase the animals but there will be a daily rate to keep them fed and in clean cages.

At the last TRI conference Rauschecker had an abstract where he said that research into treatments for tinnitus is stagnating. He proposed looking at the drug, lidocaine, which older literature suggests is effective in a percentage of tinnitus patients. From his TED Talk and TRI abstract it looks to me like Rauschecker is going for a pharmacologic treatment or brain stimulation, which could be invasive.

The real point is that there is not enough tinnitus research. Rauschecker needs to be doing research and others like him need to be doing research like this so they all begin to challenge and debate each others work. It gets to be like a friendly competition when it works right.

You guys can sit around and wait for Frequency Therapeutics to regenerate hearing, but keep in mind your brain has already reorganized itself. It may need help undoing that once hearing is restored.

And, what if the restoration isn't 100%? Tinnitus occurs with hidden hearing loss which could be an equivalent situation to less than 100% restoration of hair cells.

You can't put all your eggs in one basket. If one line of research falls thru there need to be others going on to take its place. It's not a sequential process, things need to run in parallel. -TC

 

Good Grief. I went to graduate school at Georgetown. I doubt any Jesuit you would find there would even know what tinnitus is, just like the majority of the general public.

Just say you don't want to donate and spare us the rest.

Added on October 23rd:

I wanted to circle back on this because this has come up before in my life. Please understand that I had a strict Catholic upbringing, but have left that faith, for reasons I do not want to go into, so I would not be inclined to paint a rosy picture when it comes to the Catholic priesthood.

Indeed the Jesuits (or the Jebbies as we used to call them) have a colorful and at times a brutal past. However, when you consider history, times and the world were a lot more violent then they are now. In fact I was listening to a talk show on Public Radio where it was pointed out that we currently live in the most peaceful time in history. Take Brexit for example. There was a time when people would have gone to war over the issue. Instead there was a civilized vote and the loosing side probably went to the pub and lamented over a pint rather than going to war.

To make matters worse the Jebbies take a vow of obedience to the Pope. So if the Pope says black is white, then it is. Just take a look around at all that artwork at the Vatican. A lot of it wasn't done for the glory of God, but for the glory of the Pope! You see where I'm going with this.

When I was at Georgetown, you would not have known who was or was not a Jesuit. They are a very educated bunch, that's what is important to them. Most dress in street clothes and look no different than the rest of us. Unlike secular Catholic priests, Jesuits take a vow of poverty. Also, Georgetown is an institution of higher learning, there is no proselytizing about religion- for crying out loud, Bill Clinton was a graduate of Georgetown, it certainly had no effect on him when it came to his actions with Monica Lewinski!

All I'm trying to say is that you don't want to give to Rauschecker, that's fine, but please don't use the Jesuits as an excuse. TC

 

I will try and share this on my social media and see if I can get a couple donations. Unfortunately I'm in between jobs right now and money is a little tight.

Out of curiosity. What happens to the donated money if the goal isn't reached?

 

I would never defend the Quo; I’m not really a fan of their music.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist

 

I read in some of the correspondence from Fiona Zhu that the University gets a check every month from GiveCampus which is then deposited in Rauschecker's account. He is receiving 100% of what is donated to GiveCampus. The University will also send a statement to each donor which can be used for tax deduction purposes.

Thanks for being willing to share thru your social media contacts. - TC

 

Just saw this thread and immediately donated. Too bad I can't be a geriatric animal he studies!

@reggie green - Please keep us/me posted on your experience at the Georgetown Clinic, as I live in the area too.

 

I posted it now also to r/tinnitus, maybe a few people decide to donate.

 

Hi @kmohoruk

I sent an email with your question to Fiona Zhu.

She answered that in the event the goal isn't reached by the current deadline, she said Dr. Rauschecker will continue to push to raise the money he needs and he may stage the project i.e. do what he can with $10,000, $20,000, etc.

He is also applying for a grant from others like ATA, who have supported him in the past.

I told her about the Hearing Health Foundation and the Les Paul Grant in the US. She is going to look into those to see if he is eligible to apply.

TC

 

Wonderful, that’s great to know! While I know it’s hard to get grant money sometimes, I think he would have a real good shot at it through the ATA.

Until then though, I still think we should try and get some donations going to the cause.

Thanks for following up on my question @TuxedoCat.

 

It's possible to sign up as an advocate for this campaign – and there isn't really a valid reason why that option should not be explored by a good handful of members of TinnitusTalk:



Having said that, it does seem like the folks behind the campaign had an idea of raising money without a clue as to how to do it (lack of strategy seems common with researchers). However, with a nearly 6-month deadline from now, it should be feasible to come up with a plan to support the initiative.

 

From the GiveCampus donation page:

"However, it seems that abnormalities in the brain's limbic regions, which determine the emotional impact of sensations are important and how they are experienced, may also be involved."​

This seems like just more TRT/CBT research to me. My opinion is to not donate to him.

 

Pardon my ignorance, but what is his hypothesis?

 

It looks like, to me, that he isn't focused on curing tinnitus, but rather mitigating the emotional reaction to the sound of it. Just like Tinnitus Retraining Therapy.

 

Hi @DebInAustralia

A few years ago Rauschecker did fMRIs on a group of subjects with tinnitus and a group of controls without tinnitus. He found differences between the groups in certain areas of the brain- the Nucleus Accumbens (NAc) and the ventromedial PreFrontal Cortex (vmPFC).

The hypothesis is that these two areas, which are part of the limbic system, form a noise cancellation system in the brain and if it's not working properly tinnitus results. Specifically he thinks NAc regulates the vmPFC which turns the tinnitus volume up or down. What he'd like to do next is translate the differences he found between the brains in tinnitus and control groups in the imaging study into pathophysiology. So he proposes to use geriatric primates, because rodents do not have these higher brain centers, and induce tinnitus in the animals. Then he will do imaging studies with the animals to try and replicate the findings in humans followed by histopathology on the primate brains to look for changes in cell morphology and transmitter systems in the vmPFC and NAc.

One of the reasons he believed the limbic system was involved is because depression can be a comorbidity with tinnitus. When he did the imaging studies on humans, he found the vmPFC was smaller and the NAc was hyperactive in tinnitus patients.

Hope that helps -TC

 

Not.

 

Hope you're right.

 

I would say he is trying to understand the mechanism that holds the tinnitus signal within our brain, and/or what triggers it.

We improve our odds of being able to treat or cure tinnitus if we have a better understanding of what is happening, and have a good working model that is testable.

I’m still surprised at the lack of support this has had, although, I really shouldn’t be.

 

You're right. It's certainly not our fault. Looks like they just suck at fundraising.

There's definitely people all over Georgetown that could donate substantially. It is odd.

Still less than $2,000.

If they can't even raise more than that, while at a very prestigious college, then I highly doubt that they can possibly figure out tinnitus.

 

Didn't this guy do a TED Talk a while back with like half a million views?

Should have been fundraising then and plugged it, smh

 

Yeah I think he's dumb and should be ignored.

All eyes should be on Frequency Therapeutics. Maybe the next trial for FX-322 will be open or subject to right to try laws and we can get the drug sooner than we think.

That would be very nice.

 

How was it? Did they help you?