Robin Guillard (École Polytechnique 2019)

ZETA

My project consists of advancing the research and management of tinnitus, the constant ringing or buzzing in people’s ears, often significantly reducing their quality of life.

Tinnitus is a major health problem as it affects 14% of the world’s population and occurs in a severe form and requires treatment in 2% of the population (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/article-abstract/2795168). To date, in the majority of cases, there is no cure for tinnitus. Research is struggling to make progress in this area because it is a very heterogeneous symptom in terms of cause, manifestation and experience.

My project is based on 3 verticals:

• -to work on providing better tools to better diagnose tinnitus: to do this, on the one hand we are working on better categorising patients into subgroups with the same symptom profiles, and on the other hand we are seeking to determine objective markers of tinnitus in the brain and muscle activity of these subgroups.
• To develop new therapeutic approaches to better manage them: to do this, we are working to determine which treatment is the most adapted and effective to improve a person’s quality of life given their symptom profile and we are working to develop new innovative therapeutic approaches that are specifically effective for certain sub-groups of patients.
• To study more specifically the interactions between tinnitus and sleep as many patients have significant variations in their tinnitus as a result of sleep or naps.