Scientists May Have Figured Out How to Regenerate Lost Hearing | Hacker News Reader

Scientists May Have Figured Out How to Regenerate Lost Hearing

futurism.com

43 pointsu814 comments

Been following hearing regen news for some time.

There's been some recent failed drugs in this space notably recently FREQ Fx-322. That also showed efficacy in mice and reached phase 2 before being dropped.

Hearing is a complicated issue, there's many connections that need to be made for hearing to work even besides the brains ability to relearn and regonize said signals.

Good news but we've been here before.

Problem with mRNA is in the quality control and its effort not to include stray mRNA strands which may result in things perhaps like growing stomach wall clumps or large intestine clumps.

In mice.

> the researchers coaxed the hair cells to regrow in mice ...

any thoughts on the applicability to humans?

Nope, not my field. ;)

This is possibly a cure for tinnitus. Which is awesome news!

What makes you think that?

Many (maybe most?) tinnitus cases develop after some partial hearing loss. The mechanism is not known, but one hypothesis is that the brain is "compensating" for frequencies it never hears anymore.

My tinnitus is in a range I can hear fine.

Hearing is logarithmic, the response is non-linear, ergo you may hear X000Hz but not hear X001Hz, yet hear X002Hz. X003Hz may be easier to hear, yet X004Hz may be more difficult than some. It's not a smooth response.

Take a look at some hearing response graphs to get an idea of how variable it can be across the frequency spectrum.

You may notice that I didn't say it was a universal, inescapable experience for those with tinnitus. The question was why there is any relationship at all between hearing loss and tinnitus, which does hold in a large number of cases.

Maybe some cases of tinnitus because AFAIK it commonly originates in the brain, not the ear.

what are the risks with siRNA genetic pathway unblocking research?

ah hell after typing that I dont know why I didnt just ask an AI that had data up till late 2021

I wouldn't trust an AI not to hallucinate over such a niche topic.

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