Live data from Hacker News

Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

news.mit.edu

111–120 of 215 posts

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#111

For anybody suffering with tinnitus I highly recommend the protocol William Shatner went through. You can train your brain so it’s not noticeable any more. Like wearing pants, it fades into the background.

I had tinnitus in my left ear, but it turned out to be related to TMJ, and it resolved after I wore an advanced lightwire functional (ALF) appliance for maybe 3-6 months to move my jaw back into a forward position. I had braces and wore headgear as a kid at the height of some 1980s hysteria about overbites that left millions of people like me with class II malocclusion (baby face) and sleep apnea. I'm having trouble…

I'm curious, how was TMJ diagnosed?

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#112

The article says the treatment focuses on increased speech intelligibility. Speech, depending on how you define it, can occupy a fairly narrow range of the audio spectrum that humans can perceive. My hearing loss is mostly on the high end (10-12K and above) and impedes my ability to hear speech in noisy environments. More troubling has been the inability to enjoy music/sound in those upper ranges, resulting in the mu…

Have you played around with an equalizer (hardware or software, doesn't matter) that offers rather extreme adjustments like +15dB or more, to see if you can approximate a flat source+ear system? Or is your loss more like a brickwall filter than a 12dB/octave slope for example? I'm an audio engineer, not an audiologist, so I'm just shooting from the hip here as it's something I've been curious about in case I develop…

Another thing they could try would be a different eq curve overall.

I always find The Sound of Music as reproduced on older narrow band with am radios and phonographs interesting. A lot of that gear doesn't really produce anything over 10 khz.

But, where they emphasized frequencies in the spectrum is different from Modern equipment, which basically is shooting for flat response.

My grandfather's old radio, when played in a room have a comfortable volume, sounds really good. It's present. And even when I use the little transmitter to send it an idealized signal, it had a roll off starting around 8khz, the absolute high-end was maybe 12khz.

I never took the time to analyze it in detail, and kind of wish I had. The usual 62-100 hurts emphasis, like what you'll find on your typical loudness button on a 70's or 80's stereo was there. But it also shaped the sound in 3 to 8khz range.

The end result was a very natural sound the didn't overpower, felt like it should be there in the room with all the other sounds.

Wish I could say more but I'm not where I have any detail information. I can say the enjoyment of the music is different, and fulfilling. It's not bright, like those higher frequencies bring to the overall feel of the program being produced.

Robust, full, seem descriptive... clear is another one. Often, when I hear high bandwidth audio, through limited devices, it seems muddy, unclear, not precise. Those older radios are not like that. Well, the better ones anyway.

In any case, the eq is different, and that impacts our perception related to the overall feel of the sound.

Sorry for the typos. I'm doing this with the voice dictation. I may actually go back and revisit this myself. As I age up I'm getting be expected, natural roll off most all of us get in our later years.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#113

The article says the treatment focuses on increased speech intelligibility. Speech, depending on how you define it, can occupy a fairly narrow range of the audio spectrum that humans can perceive. My hearing loss is mostly on the high end (10-12K and above) and impedes my ability to hear speech in noisy environments. More troubling has been the inability to enjoy music/sound in those upper ranges, resulting in the mu…

I tend to listen to instrumental music. In part that's because I play an instrument, and in part it's likely due to hearing loss making words not that easy to understand. I also find I prefer vocals in foreign languages since there's no point in trying to understand them. There's still plenty of good music out there. I also find that my hearing aids aren't great for music due to how much they change timbre from boost…

As my own normal, age related roll off advances, I find all the good stuff is under 10 to 12Khz.

I mentioned different eq curves down thread. I don't have a lot of technical data at hand, but older radios from the vacuum tube era where they had response over 10 khz.

A good one, play that a respectable volume in a room, sounds pretty great!

What I'm kind of hinting at here is there maybe Equalization curves that can satisfy our need for that bright open sense that is missing when the higher frequencies are also missing.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#114
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Although exciting, we also need to remember that translatability rates from animal models to humans is notoriously low, usually in the single digits for most therapeutic areas. This is true of humans as well -- there are plenty of programs that get interesting and clear results in Phase 2 (the dose ranging phase: essentially "what dosage is most efficacious") that die in Phase 3 (roughly: "OK, how does that dose re…

It's also hard to figure out just how the animal's hearing is improving (you can't simply ask) This seems relatively easy, right? Play a sound at a given frequency, associate it with a food reward. Like Pavlov's dog, but vary the frequency of the bell. Oversimplification obviously, and "easy" is extreme relative to all the other hard parts involved but that part seems very doable

I guess you can easily damage a rats/monkeys hearing consistently (may we find peace for our sins) and I guess you can easily strap those animals into an MRI or strap an EEG measuring device onto one.

Seems simpler than training a significant amount of them!

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got pretty bad - although not constant - tinnitus in my left ear after a particularly loud NYE too late in life. What I find interesting though, is that I distinctly remember as a young kid living in the countryside that I found it impossible to hear absolute silence. I distinctly remember sitting on a bale of hay on a bright summer's day with not even a breeze and the quieter I perceived things, the louder a 'T…

Wow, I thought I was the only one with the TV thing! I remember it as young as 4-5, but no one knew what I was talking about. I’ve had constant minor tinnitus since then, so I can’t help but feeling like there’s a CRT near my head that has been running since the early nineties.

I used to be able to hear whether the TV was in sync or not as well. Probably still can oh, but I don't know I don't really have one handy.

Some of those television sets were super loud!

Some of the minor tinnitus I have, as in those frequency ranges. And it doesn't really bother me, because I grew up with CRTs.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#116

What the heck is going on with tinnitus? https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%... I’ve been afflicted with tinnitus after a mild covid case in January and now that I’m looking it seems like this is a growing problem. So many comments here about tinnitus.

Airpods maybe?

Big if true, right? I know iPhone will warn you if you’ve had too much loud music on AirPods but people might not take that seriously enough.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#117
post #5

Hearing loss is one thing but it's the tinnitus that really bothers me. Hope something that can reverse the damage becomes available in my lifetime.

Is there any actual “damage” known to be associated with tinnitus?

Tinnitus is a subjective percept that arises from many, often independent, causes. Some of those causes involve hearing loss, hair cell death, hair cell deafferentiation. Some don't.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#118
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got pretty bad - although not constant - tinnitus in my left ear after a particularly loud NYE too late in life. What I find interesting though, is that I distinctly remember as a young kid living in the countryside that I found it impossible to hear absolute silence. I distinctly remember sitting on a bale of hay on a bright summer's day with not even a breeze and the quieter I perceived things, the louder a 'T…

O that's interesting. I was able to do the same (tv, refrigerator, etc). I also lived country side and I have hearing loss (35db) and tinnitus (sometimes? moderate?) in my left ear, but seemingly due to a virus infection. I have never encountered someone else that was able to hear whether a tv was on or not. At what distance could you do that?

I can hear whether they were on or off, and whether they were tuned to a signal or not.

A video signal synchronized up has a very distinct profile, and people who can hear about 15 khz can hear the sync signals modulating the higher frequency component.

I could at one point, adjust horizontal and vertical hold to a stable signal eyes closed.

Some sets were very loud, and I could hear them rooms away. Walking The Halls in my primary school, I could walk by the classrooms and say they have a TV on oh, and nail it a hundred percent every time.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got pretty bad - although not constant - tinnitus in my left ear after a particularly loud NYE too late in life. What I find interesting though, is that I distinctly remember as a young kid living in the countryside that I found it impossible to hear absolute silence. I distinctly remember sitting on a bale of hay on a bright summer's day with not even a breeze and the quieter I perceived things, the louder a 'T…

I had the same experience when visiting an anechoic chamber. I think the explanation is that without external stimuli, your brain cranks up the input gain to the max, at which point you begin to hear the ambient "neural noise" from your auditory circuitry. People taking DMT or ayahuasca also often experience an extremely high-pitched sound as the drug kicks in, which also suggests a neurological basis for the phenome…

Another way to do this, that might be less stressful or painful, is to just spend a week out in nature.

We go four week long Outdoor Adventures, where nothing works except for AM radio late at night.

After a few days, hearing very significantly improves. On the last trip we took a Macbook, and watch the movie about 4 days in, and we're shocked at just how great that laptop sounded! It seems very loud and amazing, where in an ordinary City environment it's just normal acceptable sound.

Any of you that get a chance to try this really should, it's dramatic. And it makes me really appreciate the audio engineering that went into those devices. A lot of that engineering won't ever be heard by people for in urban environments, but it is there, the work was done, and the results are pretty fantastic.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vaguely remember hearing something about tapping on the back of your head can greatly reduce tinnitus. I think there are plenty of instructional videos on youtube and it's worth a shot to try.

It helps some but only for tens of seconds to a minute. Just enough for a tech preview or nostalgia trip (depending on your level of optimism or acceptance), not a solution.

I have tinnitus - give yourself a wet willie. Seriously, suck your pinky, stick it in your ear, wiggle it around. Def helps for a while!
Post reply on HN