OBJECTIVE To investigate the long-term outcome of patients with tinnitus, the long-term effects of cognitive behavioral therapy, and what properties of tinnitus predict distress at follow-up. DESIGN A longitudinal follow-up of a consecutive sample of patients with tinnitus initially seen by a clinical psychologist. SETTING Department of Audiology, University Hospital, Uppsala, Sweden. PAR...

The presence of tinnitus often coincides with hearing loss. It has been argued that reduced peripheral input leads to frequency-specific increase in neuronal gains resulting in tinnitus-related hyper-activity. Following this gain-adaptation hypothesis, impaired cochlear function should be predictive of the presence and spectral characteristics of tinnitus. To assess cochlear function, perceptua...

The main goal of this study was to assess the prevalence and characteristics of tinnitus among students after exposure to leisure noise. In addition, the effects of tinnitus on otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) in participants suffering from chronic tinnitus were evaluated. The study consisted of two parts. First, a questionnaire regarding leisure noise exposure and tinnitus was completed. Second, t...

BACKGROUND Tinnitus is an auditory phantom perception that is most likely generated in the central nervous system. Most of the tinnitus research has concentrated on the auditory system. However, it was suggested recently that also non-auditory structures are involved in a global network that encodes subjective tinnitus. We tested this assumption using auditory steady state responses to entrain ...

Resting state functional connectivity studies of tinnitus have provided inconsistent evidence concerning its neural bases. This may be due to differences in the methodology used, but it is also likely related to the heterogeneity of the tinnitus population. In this study, our goal was to identify resting state functional connectivity alterations that consistently appear across tinnitus subgroup...

OBJECTIVES It is well established that catastrophic misinterpretations and fear are involved in the suffering and disability of patients with chronic pain. This study investigated whether similar processes explain suffering and disability in patients with chronic tinnitus. We hypothesized that patients who catastrophically (mis)interpret their tinnitus would be more fearful of tinnitus, more vi...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The Gaps-In-Noise (GIN) test is a measure to assess auditory temporal resolution, which is the ability to follow rapid changes in the envelope of a sound stimulus over time. We investigated whether unilateral tinnitus affects temporal resolution by the GIN performance. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Hearing tests including the GIN test were performed in 120 ears of 60 patients...

Five subjects mimicked the sensation caused by their tinnitus with a complex sound pattern consisting of the sum of sine waves. The imitation tinnitus was generally broadband, spanning an average of 2.94 kHz. Measures of the pitch of the tinnitus were made using both a forced-choice double-staircase (FCDS) task and a method of adjustment (MOA) task. Even tinnitus portrayed as broadband was matc...

Chronic tinnitus is often accompanied by a hearing impairment, but it is still unknown whether hearing loss can actually cause tinnitus. The association between the pitch of the tinnitus sensation and the audiogram edge in patients with high-frequency hearing loss suggests a functional relation, but a large fraction of patients with hearing loss does not present symptoms of tinnitus. We therefo...

We prospectively studied 48 otosclerosis patients over a 2-year interval. Forty-four had stapedotomy, and four had stapedectomy. Demographics, clinical history, and pre- and postoperative audiometry results were recorded. A questionnaire asking about tinnitus (intensity, pitch) and including a visual analog scale quantifying the degree (1-10) of annoyance caused by the tinnitus was completed pr...