Dysfunction of the inner ear as caused by presbyacusis, injuries or noise traumata may result in subjective tinnitus, but not everyone suffering from one of these diseases develops a tinnitus percept and vice versa. The reasons for these individual differences are still unclear and may explain why different treatments of the disease are beneficial for some patients but not for others. Here we f...

Sound therapy, or use of any sound for the purpose of tinnitus management, is widely accepted as a management tool for reduction of tinnitus complaints. The rationale for the use of sound is minimizing the patient’s perception of tinnitus by effectively reducing the perception of tinnitus relative to environmental sounds (Del Bo & Ambrosetti, 2007; Folmer & Carroll, 2006). Despite this common r...

To better quantify levels of individual impairment caused by SIT, two different sets of classification were cross matched. This combination factored in the inaccuracy caused by terminologic inexactitude. Although the system which developed historically had a subjective bias, the newer tests created to analyze tinnitus specifically were far more objective. By combining the findings of both tests...

Tinnitus is one of the major audiological diseases, affecting a significant portion of the ageing society. Despite its huge personal and presumed economic impact there are only limited therapeutic options available. The reason for this deficiency lies in the very nature of the disease as it is deeply connected to elementary plasticity of auditory processing in the central nervous system. Unders...

Objectives: Acoustic stimulation or sound therapy is proposed as a main treatment option for chronic subjective tinnitus. To further probe the field of acoustic stimulations for tinnitus therapy, this exploratory study compared 10 Hz amplitude modulated (AM) sounds (two pure tones, noise, music, and frequency modulated (FM) sounds) and unmodulated sounds (pure tone, noise) regarding their tempo...

CONCLUSIONS This article shows that the inferior colliculus plays a key role in unilateral subjective tinnitus. OBJECTIVES The major aim of this study was to determine tinnitus-related neural activity in the central auditory system of unilateral tinnitus subjects and compare this to control subjects without tinnitus. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Functional MRI (fMRI) was performed in 10 patients (5...

Maladaptive auditory cortex reorganization may contribute to the generation and maintenance of tinnitus. Because cortical organization can be modified by behavioral training, we attempted to reduce tinnitus loudness by exposing chronic tinnitus patients to self-chosen, enjoyable music, which was modified ("notched") to contain no energy in the frequency range surrounding the individual tinnitus...

OBJECTIVE Individuals with tinnitus and co-occurring psychological conditions typically rate their tinnitus as more disturbing than individuals without such comorbidities. Little is known about how tinnitus self-efficacy, or the confidence that individuals have in their abilities to successfully manage the effects of tinnitus, is influenced by mental or psychological health (PH) status. The pur...

We auditorily stimulated patients affected by subjective tinnitus with broadband noise containing a notch around their tinnitus frequency. We assessed the long-term effects on tinnitus perception in patients listening to notched noise stimuli (referred to as windowed sound therapy [WST]) by measuring the variation of subjects' tinnitus loudness over a period of 2-12 months. We tested the effect...

Dedicated To my loving wife for her utmost efforts to make impossible, possible To my kids and my parents Parts of the thesis have been published previously in: Alterations in auditory change detection associated with tinnitus residual inhibition induced by auditory electrical stimulation. Auditory middle latency responses differ in right-and left-handed subjects: An evaluation through topograp...