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

The vast majority of tinnitus cases are from hearing loss from some sort of damage, which has been largely shown experimentally to be potentially healable. All of this "trying to figure out exactly how tinnitus works" is nonsense, and will only lead to some drug for tinnitus that will have 10,000 side effects. If bimodal stimulation doesn't work then why is there a product coming out for that? No research dollars need to be going towards that either because they've apparently already figured that one out.

All research dollars for tinnitus need to be going towards getting the damaged parts of the human auditory system healed, and getting treatments to sufferers ASAP.

Everyone that so much as voices an opinion otherwise are just pushing against the cure and prolonging human suffering.

 

I disagree with your post. A drug for tinnitus would be a very good thing, even if it has bad side effects.

 

And........

 

I think Dr. Rauschecker is just trying to figure out why some people with hearing loss get tinnitus and others don't. Just like some of us get a random quiet day for no reason. I don't know if his gating mechanism theory will be fruitful and get any results though, that's the problem.

Bad side effects from drugs is a big problem though. Nortriptyline is sometimes prescribed for tinnitus, but the dry mouth from it is as bad as my tinnitus IMO.

 

There is no drug on the market for tinnitus so if there was a drug on the market it would be very good for me and a lot of other tinnitus sufferers.

 

Autifony's drug was supposed to be the one that helped tinnitus sufferer's but it failed miserably. It seems most of the potential treatments are IT type at the moment.

 

O rly...

 

Absolutist thinking can be dangerous. I choose to keep advocating for research for a cure for everyone no matter the cause. I'm glad there is currently quite a bit of private investment into regeneration research so you should be taken care of.

 

Curing the hearing loss is a logical thing to focus on in order to cure the tinnitus, but what if there were a way to stop the tinnitus by a drug that alters the brain in a specific way, why is this so unfeasible to imagine.

 

Any drug to mask tinnitus is going to adversely affect the entire nervous system.

 

#1 We have absolutely no way of knowing that. (i.e. I believe Thanos is zeroing in on specific ion channels related to tinnitus signaling only).

#2 It's just too early to know what a cure would look like, neuroscience itself is in its infancy.

And even if it does, it may be the only option for some people and they shouldn't be deprived of that option.

 

There is not a lot out there to treat tinnitus at the moment. Dr. Wazen at Silverstein Ear in Florida talks about it in the video below. My noise is very bad atm.

https://www.earsinus.com/tinnitus

Dr. Shulman’s treatment helps some:

http://www.tinnitusjournal.com/articles/gabapentin-and-tinnitus-relief.pdf

 

You believe that?

 

Believe what?

 

That.

 

Well I had about 3 points that I made so I guess we're going to have to leave it there.

 

$13.4 million to build next-gen MRI brain scanner at UC Berkeley

"...National Institutes of Health to build the NexGen 7T by 2019 to provide the highest resolution images of the brain ever obtained, able to focus on a region the size of a poppy seed."

This could help.

 

MRIs are the way, they are just too loud.

I have personally participated in the repair of an MRI machine for the VA hospital in my town while I was an employee in their engineering department. I am probably the resident expert on MRI technology in this forum.

I've also had more than 100 IT injections and am probably the resident expert on those as well.

 

I guess you are right. However, there are new MRIs that are not as loud and other ways to get around this problem. For some reason, I'm concerned with the strength of the magnetic field and what it can do to the body along with the noise.

Isolating the auditory system from acoustic noise during functional magnetic resonance imaging: Examination of noise conduction through the ear canal, head, and body - see chapter V.

Hats off to you for having the courage to go and have the procedure. I hope you continue to see improvements. Nonetheless, I talked to some real pros in the field and they remain highly skeptical of the whole "treatment."

Furthermore, there are many different types of tinnitus and it is thought that tinnitus resulting from a head/neck injury is amongst the most severe ones https://www.hear-it.org/Severe-tinnitus-after-head-and-neck-injuries

Hence why tinnitus subtyping and understanding its pathology is so important.

 

So did they discuss anything like, uh science, such as why growth factors wouldn't initiate hair cells regeneration? Or did they just say they were skeptical without explaining why?

Status: Pro
Opinion: Skeptical
Explanation: -------

mmmkay.

 

Yes, they did discuss anything like, uh science. From what I can remember one of the problems right away was with the whole drug delivery process (so the healing agent actually gets to the cochlea & dissolves/stays there, the number of injections was concerning, etc.), then the healing component itself is questionable, the said doctor hasn’t published any peer reviewed studies with regards to his treatment yet he’s claiming on his website to have a ‘method for treatment of the sensory-neuronal hearing losses and tinnitus’ with a price tag $18.000. Why is it so surprising that when other health professionals in the field see something like this they become sceptical?

You got it right, except for the last point.

 

Because they're stupid and don't even understand this field at all.

This is why so many people on this forum have stories of screwed up ENTs.

"Experts" don't always have the best outlook on the field.

"Lee DeForest has said in many newspapers and over his signature that it would be possible to transmit the human voice across the Atlantic before many years. Based on these absurd and deliberately misleading statements, the misguided public ... has been persuaded to purchase stock in his company ..." -- a U.S. District Attorney, prosecuting American inventor Lee DeForest for selling stock fraudulently through the mail for his Radio Telephone Company in 1913.


"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." -- Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895.


"The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." -- Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, British Post Office, 1878


"[Television] won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." -- Darryl Zanuck, movie producer, 20th Century Fox, 1946.


"When the Paris Exhibition [of 1878] closes, electric light will close with it and no more will be heard of it." -- Oxford professor Erasmus Wilson.

 

Tinnitus Friends,

My husband has set up a $1,000 match on GiveCampus to support Dr. Rauschecker's research. This is the birthday gift I requested this year.

As an Advocate, Tinnitus Talk has now generated 6728 clicks and 26 gifts, totaling $2,741.

If you would like to make a donation and have it matched, please follow this link and it will be associated with Tinnitus Talk -

https://www.givecampus.com/jr9gny

With Thanks!
TC

 

VERY GENEROUS!!!!!

@Astro you should give a $1,000 to Dr. Rauschecker since you're now making over a million bucks a year in salary.

https://www.givecampus.com/jr9gny

 

Please consider making a gift to support Dr. Josef Rauschecker's tinnitus research this #Giving Tuesday! His team is finishing up the study by the end of this month. They will move forward to process and analyze data as the next step. The goal is to raise $10,000 and they are 33% away from the goal. (The next $244 will be matched, that's what is left of the original $1,000 matching gift.) Many, many thanks to those who have donated. -TC

 

Wow! Thanks to all who donated to Prof Rauschecker's Research at Georgetown, there is only $44 remaining of the matching gift!! -TC

 

The idea that tinnitus starts in the auditory cortex as a result of lost input and then the limbic system not filtering it out of consciousness has got to be totally wrong.

If the auditory cortex makes the sound as a result of lost input, then how come tinnitus can start immediately after noise trauma but it doesn't start immediately when you go into a quiet room? Noise trauma immediately damages the nerve synapses at the cochlea and I think that is the location of the noise, this would also explain hyperacusis better.

Of course the auditory cortex is active in tinnitus patients, because there is a signal there, coming from the auditory system. If this theory of tinnitus originating in the auditory cortex is true the there is no way that the tongue zapping of Lenire would have any effect whatsoever.

ANNNNNND with a brief internet search I found researchers that have the same hypothesis:



https://www.karger.com/Article/PDF/59490

This theory is like having a microphone hooked up to your computer, dropping the microphone and breaking it, and then claiming the sound is coming from the audio drivers on the computer because there is an audio signal present in the audio software.

 

I honestly don't get what $10K is going to do... no wonder there is no cure for this.