A few years ago I sat down with Bob Traynor on @WeekinHearing to talk about severe tinnitus and whether soft brain interfaces could eventually play a role. Tinnitus is common, roughly 15% of people experience it, chronic cases (around 120 million people) are the ones that still have almost no good options. It’s heterogeneous, hard to measure, and we still don’t fully understand the mechanisms. In many of the worst cases, the problem isn’t only in the ear; there are hyperactive networks in the brain that keep the percept going. Our thinking then (and still) is that soft, stretchable surface electrodes could give us a safer way to both record and stimulate those networks. Because the material matches the softness of the brain, we can cover more of the cortex with less risk of damage, and the electrodes are thin and flexible enough that they can be folded and inserted through a smaller opening. The longer-term idea is closed-loop: record continuously, look for signals correlated with the tinnitus, and use that feedback (with machine learning) to adjust stimulation for each patient instead of applying the same pattern to everyone. At the time we were still proving the hardware worked in humans, starting with epilepsy cases where we had surgical access. That sequence still makes sense to me, get the device and the regulatory path solid first, then move carefully into harder indications like severe tinnitus where both the technology and the science need to advance together. Full conversation: youtube.com/watch?v=7zBebmyM… #Tinnitus #BCI #Neurotech