Assistant Professor, West Virginia University, 2023 Clinical Research Grant Recipient
Tinnitus-Related Decreased Inhibitory and Increased Excitatory Auditory Neural Function Across Discrete Central Auditory Nervous System Frequency Regions
What impact do you hope it will have? Why should people care?
One of the most interesting findings from this study is that people whose tinnitus has a severe impact on their lives show the most abnormal brain responses. In contrast, people who hear tinnitus but are less bothered by it have brain responses that look much more like people who do not have tinnitus at all.
This suggests there may be a connection between how the brain processes sound at a subconscious level and how a person consciously reacts to their tinnitus. What I want to explore next is whether improving a person’s tinnitus distress also improves those underlying brain mechanisms.
This approach could help us better understand why some people feel satisfied with tinnitus management while others do not. It could also help us evaluate the treatments people already receive, such as hearing aids, sound therapy, counseling, or cognitive behavioral therapy, and see how they affect the brain processes behind tinnitus. In the future, the same approach could also help test new treatments.
People should care because many patients feel frustrated and believe nothing can be done for tinnitus. Research like this is a step toward changing that by helping us understand what works, for whom, and why. That knowledge can lead to better care and better outcomes for people living with tinnitus.
How is your approach innovative?
Traditional tinnitus assessments have strengths, but they also have limitations. Hearing tests tell us how much trouble someone has hearing, and self-report questionnaires tell us how tinnitus affects a person’s daily life, such as sleep, concentration, or social interactions. But hearing tests are not tinnitus specific, and questionnaires do not provide any information about what is happening in the brain.
My approach adds another layer by measuring auditory processing in the brain. These measures provide physiological information about how the brain responds to sound, and in my data, they appear to reflect tinnitus-related processes at the group level.
This makes the approach innovative because it complements existing tools. By combining behavioral tests, self-reports, and brain-based measures, we can get a broader and more complete understanding of how tinnitus affects people.
What challenges did you face, and how did ASHFoundation support you?
One of the biggest challenges I faced was participant recruitment. Like many researchers who conduct human subjects research, it can be difficult to find enough people who meet the specific criteria required for a study. In my case, we needed participants with very particular characteristics related to tinnitus.
Once we found those individuals, we also wanted to make the experience worthwhile for them. Participating in the study requires a real commitment of time. Sessions can last several hours and involve placing electrodes on the head to measure brain responses, which can be a bit messy and time consuming.
ASHFoundation support helped address this challenge by allowing us to compensate participants for their time. Because the study focuses on evaluating tinnitus rather than providing direct treatment, that support made it much easier to recruit participants and ultimately complete the research.
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