Tinnitus and Auditory Perception Mechanisms
28 April 2025
Do you have tinnitus?
Take part to help us understand the neural mechanisms underlying the condition better.
Chronic tinnitus is a constant ringing/tone/hissing that a person can hear despite it having no physical source.
Forming predictions based on prior experiences is a fundamental part of how we perceive the world. By presenting sequences of sounds and measuring brain responses via fMRI, we aim investigate how auditory perception differs between people with and without tinnitus.
Requirements
- Must have subjective tinnitus for 6 months or more (persistent sound heard in one or both ears that is not coming from an external sound source or actual sounds being generated inside your body such as turbulent blood flow), that is present all or most of time in the absence of background sounds that are sufficiently loud to mask it;
- Aged between 18 and 55;
- No severe/profound hearing loss;
- The ability to lie very still for around 60 minutes at a time;
- No presence of claustrophobia/fear of enclosed or tight spaces;
- No eye or head injuries involving metal (e.g. splinters from working with metal, or shrapnel);
- No implanted medical devices (including pacemakers, cochlear implants, heart valves, aneurysm clips or coronary stents, infusion pumps, or Hickman lines);
- No abnormalities of brain structure (e.g. stroke, tumour), or other neurological disorders (e.g. multiple sclerosis or epilepsy);
- No ongoing use of sedating medications, or certain other nerve-acting medications;
- No current mental health condition of sufficient severity to prevent certain activities of everyday life;
- No experience of seizures.
Keywords
Ethical approval
The study operates according to standard research protocols for the use of MRI in human brain imaging research, which have been reviewed and approved by the University College London Research Ethics Committee.
About the researcher
My name is Kate, I am an auditory researcher whose PhD and subsequent work aims to understand how we perceive sound, and various auditory conditions such as hyperacusis and tinnitus.
