Participant Experience: Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS) Paired With Tones for Tinnitus

As far as I know there is substance behind both notched music and neuromonics. However both those treatments require months if not years to show results. The stimulation of the vagus nerve speeds up the learning process by coupling sounds to the realease of acetylcholine, which tells the brain that this is something important.

The technology behind it might not be new but if it works, why not..

The same goes for MuteButton. If it works then, great. If not. Well, back to the drawing board.

 

Agree unless some form of forced nerve plasticity as seen in animals tests

I mean not sure why this is merited right.... This and notched sound states to remove t freuency, to somehow move neurons off the heavy t area and around to the other freuencies. Aka re wire

Why not

A) get an in ear hearing aid that totally blocks canal
B) if say t frequency at 5000, leave it dead, so now all hearing on every say life wont hear 5000 hertz
C) open hearing, to all other frequencies. 5000 and an area aroumd it leave silenced.


Voila

Neuromonics of sorts but to all natural day and night. If the theory works, this even if years, easier to do, will push all noise around notched out t zone. Without having to hear beeps for hours a day or notched music
But i dont like this method prefer zwicker tone.... As in give brain missing sound icluding t frequency, and force out phantom sound with a more natural, at birth, reverse back to normal wiring of the DCN.

Vagus falls down a little here on the actual acoustic method imho. Leaving out the t zone, doesnt add up, as its left out given peak noise induced loss anyway,.... SO The zwicker tone peaks... You need stimulus imo on all missing frequencies. Plus that way no need to try and find your t frequency. Plus i have multi frequency t so vagus wont work for me or many. Then no stimulus on other invading nerves to DCN...

This work is superior give recognises the action of other nerves causing t....
http://www.nature.com/srep/2015/150325/srep09462/full/srep09462.html

 

Not sure what you mean by forced. It would have to be unless you are able to fully concentrate on every beep several hundred times per day for weeks.

I understand the idea but the problem would be of a technical nature. How would you block all the sound at a perticular frequency? What material would such earplug be made from? And at that, that could be changed to match the frequency of different tinnitus patients in all of the spectra from 20-20000 hz? The cost of development for such a device would just be too high. If even possible.

We accually don't know what kinds of tones thay play to the patients. All they say is that it is made individually for every patient.

The hypothesis is that in people (as well as animals) that have T, the perception of sound is due to overactivity of neurons responsible for one frequency. This is why one of the criterias for VNS treatment is T of tonal quality.

By activating neurons of other frequencies than that of the T one levels out the activity of all different parts responsible for different frequencies. So that malfunctioning part would not be so much more active then all the other ones. And in that way the perception of sound is made weaker. The neurons firing the to make the tone are drowned out. Or so is the theory.

It's a bit like this. If you have 100 people in a room and 10 of them starts talking. The chances are that it will be noticable. Now if you bring in a 100 more people and make the room bigger. Then the 10 that are talking would'nt be as noticable.

The tests will show if it works or not. They had very good results in the animal tests and pretty good results from the one human trial in Belgium. That was however only made on 10 patients and 5 of them were on drugs that could effect neuroplasticity. But 4 out of the remaining 5 had excelent and lasting results.

 

we hope as technology progress they will find mixture of teck and medicaments

 

Awhile back there was a 2 hour video online form Micheal Kilgard talking about this theory. His theory is: lots of neurons in the brain (and the auditory cortex) do not really have a specific task, they just happily talk along with those groups of neurons that do have a very specific task. The first group of neurons are easily turned over to babble along with other other groups of neurons. With VNS you can make them respond to 10 kHz instead of of 12 kHz. The bad thing....the neurons assumed to be responsible for tinnitus are of the second group (a very stable group of neurons that will not easily change the connections that seem to be useful).

The theory of VNS for tinnitus is just based op hammering that part of the brain (so that even stable networks are broken down to form new, more meaningful networks). And what Micheal said in that video....it "might" just work. Animal study's and the first human trails do confirm this....it might just work.

video was available on (but offline for some reason): http://www.utdallas.edu/~kilgard/

 

@labrat10687

any updates?!

 

did you have the implantation? is your tinnitus improved?

 

After an embarrassing amount of emotional yuckieness, Yes, I have been "implanted"! I Fully understand the feelings regarding this study ... but I beg of all, for patience ... this is a current, active/ongoing trial study, as such, integrity, honesty for and within this study, must be maintained! I feel I can answer questions regarding my surgery, but as for anytbing else ... we must be patient. Remember this is a "blinded two arm study".
As near as I can tell this study "should" conclude sometime 2016.
I understand this stinks ... but try to imagine .... being a participant ... (Any surgery ... sucks!!!)

 

Good to hear from you guineapig! Glad the surgery went well. I fully concur about this being an active/ongoing trial study. Yes we must be patient. I do hope everyone understands. Thanks!

 

I think we understand you cannot tell us much about the trail. I would like to see a small sign off life....and give us a bit off an insiders view.....

 

How are things?

 

These guys have been waffling on about VNS for years, I know they have gained a lot of funding for their research - I haven't seen any objective evidence of it working or having potential.

We need smart oversight so that the little funding that is available for tinnitus research is well directed

 

for this moment we have only autifony as a promosing treatment.

 

http://www.utdallas.edu/~sxv140030/...tinnitus._A_case_series._Neuromodulation..pdf

Actual case studies, with real people and real results! How can you say this is not promising? It's probably the most promising treatment of all!

 

your article is old
I see any one of these participant people come yet to this forum and say : yeeeees it works

 

2.5 year is not that old...and the are sill moving along. This old study is the reason this trail is running! A message at one of many tinnitus boards is not really a good benchmark for research results is it...?

 

Probably because the people that are running the study have told them not to. It could interfere with the results if the trialees started to influence each others experience. We have to be patient. It's pretty much like the cops don't want witnesses from a crime scene talking to each other either.

Also out of the millions of people who have tinnitus we have about 7000 members on this forum. That's not even qualified to be counted in percentages but rather in ppm (parts per million). That means that an overwhelming majority of tinnitus sufferers/patients are not members on this forum. So the chances are that we don't have that many people from the study that are active here, if any.

 

I still cannot figure out what's the role of the vagus nerve in all this.

 

Stimulation of the Vagus nerve releases chemicals in the brain that are important for learning and promote neuroplasticity.

In other words it promotes changes and formation of new connections between neurons.

 

But then there's no telling how it's all going to end up?

Strokes also induce major changes in the brain.

 

That is why it's coupled with sound stimuly. Also the amount of change is not as dramatic as in a stroke. The chemical that they are primarly after is Acethylcholine which is a neurotransmitter. The target is the auditory pathways.

Oh and another thing that causes alteration of the brain is getting shot with a sawed-off shootgun through the mouth but I don't think they are interested in that kind of change.

 

@Silvio Sabo

But unless I'm wrong it seems that the idea VNS stimulation has been there for a while and results have not been great (for tinnitus)

 

On the contrary. Results have been grait, in animals. They are now trying with humans. Just be patient and wait for the results from those trials.

 

Sounds like we have a lot to be patient for. This, as well as AM-101 + Autifony phase 2 trials.

 

Yeah that's life with Tinnitus. But at least there is progress. When I got this 9 years ago there were no trials what so ever. AM-101 wasen't even heard of. So patiance, patiance, patiance... There are those on this forum that have waited for over 30 years.

Actually they did a small trial with VNS in Belgium with 10 participants. 4 out of 10 had excellent results. However 5 out of the 6 that had no benefits were on drugs that can interfere with neuroplasticity so it's possible that their lack of positive results was because of that and not because the therapy was flawed.

 

Micheal Kilgard (and his team) is (are) the real deal!

I have posted it before:

Scientific Explanation of VNS Paired...

I am considering donating to his research....

 

Great, an almost 4 year old video.

More interesting would be some real statements from @guineapig and @labrat10687

hold back your money till then

Edit: What I forgot to mention. Towards the end 2014 I wrote microtransponder, if they could tell me when and if the VNS therapy is coming to Germany. Well they said its gonna be 2015.
Doesn't look like that if they're still in trials in the US

 

I would love to hear from them. The trail is ongoing and we must excersize patients....it takes time.

I just made a monthly donation. They do not need money because the have treatment. They need money because they are searching for it!

 

Case report April 2015:

http://journals.lww.com/otology-neu...trolled_Vagus_Nerve_Stimulation_Paired.1.aspx

The MML was reduced by 19 dB SL in the right ear (58 to 34 dB SL) and 9 dB SL in the left ear (39 to 30 dB SL) (Fig. 3). Before the sham stimulation period, the MML could not be obtained at baseline (>70 dB SL). After the sham therapy, the MML for the left ear was 22 dB SL and for the right ear 19 dB SL.