Severe noise-induced damage to the inner ear leads to auditory nerve fiber degeneration thereby reducing the neural input to the cochlear nucleus (CN). Paradoxically, this leads to a significant increase in spontaneous activity in the CN which has been linked to tinnitus, hyperacusis and ear pain. The biological mechanisms that lead to an increased spontaneous activity are largely unknown, but ...

INTRODUCTION There is some debate as to what extent epidemiological data for the prevalence of childhood tinnitus can be relied on. While indications are that the prevalence is relatively high, referral numbers for children with tinnitus are reported to be low and many of the studies have a number of methodological difficulties. We describe the protocol of a systematic review aimed at assessing...

Sensorineural hearing loss induced by noise or ototoxic drug exposure reduces the neural activity transmitted from the cochlea to the central auditory system. Despite a reduced cochlear output, neural activity from more central auditory structures is paradoxically enhanced at suprathreshold intensities. This compensatory increase in the central auditory activity in response to the loss of senso...

1 a Hyper-responsive Medial Olivocochlear System in Humans with 2 Tinnitus and Hyperacusis 3 4 Inge M. Knudson, Christopher A. Shera, Jennifer R. Melcher 5 6 1 Dept. of Otology and Laryngology, Harvard Medical School, Boston MA 7 2 Dept. of Otolaryngology, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Boston MA 8 3 Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology Program, Harvard-MIT Division of 9 Health Sc...

OBJECTIVES Sleep difficulties are among the most frequent complaints associated with tinnitus. Yet most studies reporting on this problem are rather succinct, and all of them lack proper age- and health-matched control subjects. DESIGN The present study reports on 102 participants (51 with and 51 without tinnitus), assessed with the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), the Beck-II depressio...