The effects of simulated tinnitus on directing attention in the dichotic listening paradigm

Abstract

Tinnitus is the perception of a sound in proximity to the head without the presence of an external auditory source. It is estimated that up to 20% of the adult population suffers from this chronic disease. The costs of tinnitus, meanwhile, are high: an estimated 6.8 billion euro per year in the Netherlands. Much of the disease, however, remains unknown. This thesis lists what we know and do not know and conducts an experiment (using noise tag) in healthy patients to explore the effects of tinnitus on the ability to direct your attention to another auditory source. Tinnitus was compared to another more neutral, constant sound: traffic noise. The traffic noise was found to be more distracting than the tinnitus sound. These results suggest that most troubles related to tinnitus probably stem from its persistence. This may be promising for treatments based on attention diversion.