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Comment Re:I predict nothing will come of this (Score 1) 82

So far the treatments of tinnitus have been effective, but with a few caveats (as with all medical interventions).

Here is the original animal study regarding tinnitus: http://www.nature.com/nature/j...
And a review paper: http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
Here is a clinical trial that happened: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...
And another clinical case study: http://journals.lww.com/otolog...
And here is a clinical trial currently happening: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2...

To sum up the clinical trial that has already been published: researchers found that VNS did improve tinnitus, but only in patients that were not on drugs that affected neuromodulators such as acetylcholine and norepinephrine.

Comment Re:I smell bs (Score 1) 82

Not enough research? Vagus nerve stimulation has been around since '90s, and is already in use in the clinic for both depression and epilepsy. It is more recently being explored as an option for stroke and brain injury recovery.

A simple search of "vagus nerve stimulation" on Google Scholar returns 140,000 results. If you constrict it to only the year 2015, it returns over 2000 results. That's a lot of research.

There are also plenty of clinical trials happening, as you can see here:
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2...

Comment Re:Cures everything Marijuana allegedly cures (Score 5, Informative) 82

The mechanisms behind the beneficial effects of vagus nerve stimulation are still being explored, but many researchers believe that timing is important. Precise timing is something difficult, if not impossible, to achieve using drugs - they take awhile to become active. Once active, they remain active for hours or days, and then they slowly decline.

VNS, as well as other methods of neural stimulation, can be applied very precisely in the time domain, allowing for a timed release of neuromodulators into the brain that can influence brain plasticity. Although not all VNS research includes timing as an important issue, a large body of the research focuses on this element of it.

Here's one paper: http://journals.lww.com/neuror...

Science

Electrical Pulses Break Light Speed Record 68

J'raxis writes "PhysicsWeb writes that 'Pulses that travel faster than light have been sent over a significant distance for the first time. Alain Haché and Louis Poirier of the University of Moncton in Canada transmitted the pulses through a 120-metre cable made from a coaxial 'photonic crystal.' Haché and Poirier emphasize that their experiment does not break any laws of physics. Although the group velocity exceeds the speed of light - an effect permitted by relativity -- each component of the pulse travels slower than light.'"

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