Tinnitus Research Initiative (TRI) 2016 Conference

[Kyxwz]

Dear Steve,
do you tell me if in this conference they speak about off label drugs or future treatments (retigabine & others)?

 

[japongus]

The posters were all out for you to look at any time so you could take them in as and when. The poster sessions were when you knew the authors would be around to ask questions of. There were a lot to see and some pretty interesting stuff on them too.

So a poster session is like an expo of cars, or real estate, or a sunday market, only it offered information about each phd/regulat research project to whomever was interested? Or was it a lecture hall and they had a quick few minutes to show their poster? I'm not sure I understand how there could have been so many projects (over 100) in so little time.

I think that it's more that the loss of grey matter in that area could be associated with the inability of those of us with tinnitus (certainly chronic) to filter and treat the sound as unwanted. I think of it, and I may be wrong, as a broken rejection algorithm - instead of sub-conscously saying "oh, that's pointless, don't need to listen to it" we seem to have it become a problem and be too loud. This kind of research can be a precursor to drug development or other treatment interventions.

Sure, but how does lighting up a part of a brain associated with pleasant/unpleasant sound prove that it's lack of inhibition and not just the brain reacting to a bodily unpleasant sound?

 

[Jamclem]

Wonderful to read about this. Something to be hopeful about

 

[mintblue]

Deeper Hearing Damage & The Synaptic Loss

The final keynote, Charles Liberman, looked at deeper hearing damage. The evidence shows that even where there is a mild hearing cell damage from noise exposure there could be a larger damage that goes unnoticed to the synaptic connections. We lose around 30% of the synaptic connections naturally over the course of our lives, it takes a loss of 90% before they have a significant impact on an audiogram.

When exposed to a loud noise - say a concert - the hair cells may go back to normal but the synaptic loss doesn't. Regardless of the level of hearing damage the synapses are vulnerable. The audiogram may not change but the level of information going to the Central Nervous System is reduced.

Neurotrophins can restore the synapses, this is where his research is heading next. It's unclear how the use of steroids could affect the synapses when treating a hearing loss, highlighted this as an area for research.

This is super interesting, feeling renewed hope.

 

[Steve]

Sure, but how does lighting up a part of a brain associated with pleasant/unpleasant sound prove that it's lack of inhibition and not just the brain reacting to a bodily unpleasant sound?

It's not an area of activity or inactivity, rather that the area in tinnitus patients versus a healthy control group was smaller in size. There appears to be a shrinkage there, in an area that is known to activate in the discerning of pleasant or unpleasant noise.

I did ask Josef if there was any comparison to patients with intermittent tinnitus (he has intermittent tinnitus himself) but there isn't any work unfortunately. Will be interesting to see it though, maybe the gating mechanism in intermittent tinnitus is different, maybe there is shrinkage but not so much. He mentioned - unrelated - research showing a different area of the brain enlarged in jugglers. This to me is really intriguing, can we firstly figure out how to increase grey matter in the observed area and then test if this affects the perception and ability to filter out tinnitus when we train to enlarge it?

Dear Steve,
do you tell me if in this conference they speak about off label drugs or future treatments (retigabine & others)?

Hi Kyxwz. No there wasn't any talk that featured off-label drugs that I saw. It is an interesting area, although there are developments from SciFluor and with RL-81 that seem to push beyond Retigabine.

The big problem with off-label drug testing, as with most medical trials, is the time and expense involved, as well as the ethical approval required. There are different ways of trialling but to conduct a RCT is the best measure and also the biggest challenge.

 

[IreneO]

Hello, I'm a n00b and I'd like to thank Steve for reporting on this conference. It's very helpful to get an overview of these different research areas.

 

[japongus]

It's not an area of activity or inactivity, rather that the area in tinnitus patients versus a healthy control group was smaller in size. There appears to be a shrinkage there, in an area that is known to activate in the discerning of pleasant or unpleasant noise.

I did ask Josef if there was any comparison to patients with intermittent tinnitus (he has intermittent tinnitus himself) but there isn't any work unfortunately. Will be interesting to see it though, maybe the gating mechanism in intermittent tinnitus is different, maybe there is shrinkage but not so much. He mentioned - unrelated - research showing a different area of the brain enlarged in jugglers. This to me is really intriguing, can we firstly figure out how to increase grey matter in the observed area and then test if this affects the perception and ability to filter out tinnitus when we train to enlarge it?

I was hoping he'd test his sensorineural tinnitus patients against patients with confirmed muscular tinnitus, which is also capable of being continuous in nature and could be extremely underdiagnosed.

 

[japongus]

@Steve what was the price of registration? Do you know if this year's meeting, which seems to be getting hosted in Spain, is also open for attendance?

 

[Steve]

@Steve what was the price of registration? Do you know if this year's meeting, which seems to be getting hosted in Spain, is also open for attendance?

Hi. There is a TINNET meeting in Spain (Madrid) at the end of March, which is also a mini tinnitus conference. I'm there and giving a talk: Crowdsensing, big data and patient participation. It's not a full conference you can register for. This year there is no big TRI conference because of the International Tinnitus Seminar in Warsaw 22-24 May.

TRI 18 is in Germany. We didn't pay anything to register for TRI 16 but we are a non-profit so that may have made a difference (I can't exactly remember now).

 

[japongus]

Hi. There is a TINNET meeting in Spain (Madrid) at the end of March, which is also a mini tinnitus conference. I'm there and giving a talk: Crowdsensing, big data and patient participation. It's not a full conference you can register for. This year there is no big TRI conference because of the International Tinnitus Seminar in Warsaw 22-24 May.

TRI 18 is in Germany. We didn't pay anything to register for TRI 16 but we are a non-profit so that may have made a difference (I can't exactly remember now).

These conferences are usually expensive af for some reason. The one in Madrid, being a public university, and it being a 'mini-conference'' on the second day, do you know if it might be open to all for free? It's a long shot but maybe.

 

[RODRIGO]

Thank you for the information.
Madrid is so close!

 

[Steve]

These conferences are usually expensive af for some reason. The one in Madrid, being a public university, and it being a 'mini-conference'' on the second day, do you know if it might be open to all for free? It's a long shot but maybe.

Good question and I'm not sure. Markku has messaged to ask TRI, we'll let you know what they say.

 

[Markku]

These conferences are usually expensive af for some reason. The one in Madrid, being a public university, and it being a 'mini-conference'' on the second day, do you know if it might be open to all for free? It's a long shot but maybe.

Hey,

You are welcome to attend the conference on the second day, free of charge.

 

[Rasmus]

When does this start ? and can we watch it live ?