oh boy, sign me up! 

oh.... how do they know the rats had tinnitis? and how do they know it stopped? 
they taught the rats how to ring a bell or something?

 
Thanks,
Tamar

~~~~~~~~
When the power of love overcomes the love of power, 

the world will come to know [log in to unmask]
http://www.zazzle.com/TamarMag*Yes, please include the * so I get paid a little 
higher royalty.





________________________________
From: Meir Weiss <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wed, January 12, 2011 10:25:08 AM
Subject: FW: REBOOTING THE BRAIN HELPS STOP THE RING OF TINNITUS IN RATS

-----Original Message-----
From: NIH news releases and news items [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of NIH OLIB (NIH/OD)
Sent: January 12, 2011 13:00
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: REBOOTING THE BRAIN HELPS STOP THE RING OF TINNITUS IN RATS

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 
NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH NIH News 
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
<http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/>
Embargoed for Release: Wednesday, January 12, 2011, 1 p.m. EST

CONTACT: Jennifer Wenger, 301-496-7243, <e-mail:[log in to unmask]>

REBOOTING THE BRAIN HELPS STOP THE RING OF TINNITUS IN RATS

NIH-funded researchers were able to eliminate tinnitus in a group of rats by
stimulating a nerve in the neck while simultaneously playing a variety of
sound tones over an extended period of time, says a study published today in
the advance online publication of the journal Nature. The hallmark of
tinnitus is often a persistent ringing in the ears that is annoying for
some, debilitating for others, and currently incurable. Similar to pressing
a reset button in the brain, this new therapy was found to help retrain the
part of the brain that interprets sound so that errant neurons reverted back
to their original state and the ringing disappeared. The research was
conducted by scientists from the University of Texas at Dallas and
MicroTransponder Inc., in Dallas. 

"Current treatments for tinnitus generally involve masking the sound or
learning to ignore it," said James F. Battey, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., director of
the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders
(NIDCD), which funded a large part of the research. "If we can find a way to
turn off the noise, we'll be able to improve life substantially for the
nearly 23 million American adults who suffer from this disorder."

Tinnitus is a symptom some people experience as a result of hearing loss.
When sensory cells in the inner ear are damaged, such as from loud noise,
the resulting hearing loss changes some of the signals sent from the ear to
the brain. For reasons that are not fully understood, some people will
develop tinnitus as a result.  

"We believe the part of the brain that processes sounds-the auditory
cortex-delegates too many neurons to some frequencies, and things begin to
go awry," said Michael Kilgard, Ph.D., associate professor of behavior and
brain sciences at UT-Dallas, and a co-principal investigator on the study.
"Because there are too many neurons processing the same frequencies, they
are firing much stronger than they should be." 

In addition, the neurons fire in sync with one another and they also fire
more frequently when it is quiet. According to Dr. Kilgard, it's these
changing brain patterns that produce tinnitus, which is usually a
high-pitched tone in one or both ears, but it may also be heard as clicking,
roaring, or a whooshing sound. 

Dr. Kilgard, along with co-principal investigator Navzer Engineer, M.D.,
Ph.D., of MicroTransponder, Inc., and others on the research team first
sought to induce changes in the auditory cortex of a group of rats by
pairing stimulation of the vagus nerve, a large nerve that runs from the
head and neck to the abdomen, with the playing of a single tone. When the
vagus nerve is stimulated, it releases acetylcholine, norepinephrine, and
other chemicals that help encourage changes in the brain. They wanted to
find out if they could induce more brain cells to become responsive to that
tone over a period of time.

For 20 days, 300 times a day, researchers played a high-pitched tone, at 9
kilohertz (kHz), to eight rats. At the same time that the tone was played,
an electrode delivered a very small electrical pulse to the vagus nerve. The
researchers found that the number of neurons tuned to the 9 kHz frequency
had jumped by 79 percent in comparison to the control rats. 

In a second group of rats, they randomly played two different tones -- one
at 4 kHz and the other at 19 kHz -- but stimulated the vagus nerve only for
the higher tone. Neurons tuned to the higher frequency increased by 70
percent while neurons tuned to the 4 kHz tone actually decreased in number,
indicating that the tone alone was not enough to initiate the change. It had
to be accompanied by vagus nerve stimulation (VNS).

Next, the researchers tested whether tinnitus could be reversed in
noise-exposed rats by increasing the numbers of neurons tuned to frequencies
other than the tinnitus frequency. A group of the noise-exposed rats with
tinnitus received VNS that was paired with different tones surrounding the
tinnitus frequency 300 times a day for about three weeks. Rats in the
control group received VNS with no tones, tones with no VNS, or no therapy.
For both groups, measurements were taken four weeks after noise exposure,
then 10 days after therapy began, and one day, one week, and three weeks
after therapy ended. 

Rats that received the VNS paired with tones showed promising results for
each time point after therapy began, including midway through therapy,
indicating that the ringing had stopped for the treated rats. Conversely,
the data from control rats indicated their tinnitus had continued throughout
the testing period. What's more, the researchers followed two treated and
two control rats for an additional two months and found that the treated
rats maintained this benefit for 3.5 months after noise exposure, while the
controls continued to be impaired.

The researchers also evaluated neural responses in the auditory cortex in
these same rats and found that neurons in the treated rats had returned to
their normal levels, where they remained. This indicated that the tinnitus
had disappeared. However, the control group levels continued to be
distorted, indicating that the tinnitus persisted. Overall, the researchers
found that the VNS treatment paired with tones had not only reorganized the
neurons to respond to their original frequencies, but it also made the brain
responses sharper, decreased excitability, and decreased synchronization of
auditory cortex neurons.

"The key is that, unlike previous treatments, we're not masking the
tinnitus, we're not hiding the tinnitus. We are retuning the brain from a
state where it generates tinnitus to a state that does not generate
tinnitus. We are eliminating the source of the tinnitus," said Dr. Kilgard.

VNS is currently being used to treat roughly 50,000 people with epilepsy or
depression, and MicroTransponder hopes to conduct clinical studies using VNS
with paired tones in tinnitus patients. 

"The clinical protocol is being finalized now and a pilot study in tinnitus
patients will be conducted in Europe in the near future," said Dr. Engineer,
vice president of preclinical affairs at MicroTransponder. "The support of
the NIDCD has been essential to allow our research team to continue our work
in this important area of tinnitus research." MicroTransponder is a
neuroscience-based medical device company that is working to develop
treatments for a variety of neurological diseases, including tinnitus,
chronic pain, and anxiety. 

In the meantime, the researchers are currently working to fine-tune the
procedure to better understand such details as the most effective number of
paired frequencies to use for treatment; how long the treatment should last;
and whether the treatment would work equally well for new tinnitus cases in
comparison to long-term cases.

Other sponsors of the work include the James S. McDonnell Foundation, St.
Louis, Mo.; Norman Hackerman Advanced Research Program, Austin, Texas; Texas
Emerging Technology Fund, Austin, Texas; and MicroTransponder, Inc.

For more information about tinnitus, see
<www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/tinnitus.htm>.

NIDCD supports and conducts research and research training on the normal and
disordered processes of hearing, balance, smell, taste, voice, speech and
language and provides health information, based upon scientific discovery,
to the public. For more information about NIDCD programs, see the Web site
at <www.nidcd.nih.gov>.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) -- The Nation's Medical Research
Agency -- includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency
for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical
research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both
common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs,
visit <www.nih.gov>.
  
##

This NIH News Release is available online at:
<http://www.nih.gov/news/health/jan2011/nidcd-12.htm>.

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