Tinnitus and Its Effect on Working Memory and Attention

International Journal of Audiology, 2007

The effect of chronic, severe tinnitus on two visual tasks was investigated. A general depletion of resources hypothesis states that overall performance would be impaired in a tinnitus group relative to a control group whereas a controlled processing hypothesis states that only tasks that are demanding, requiring strategic processes, are affected. Eleven participants who had experienced severe tinnitus for more than two years comprised the tinnitus group. A control group was matched for age and verbal IQ. Levels of anxiety, depression, and high frequency average hearing level were treated as covariates. Tasks consisted of the sayword (easy) and say-color (demanding) conditions of the Stroop task, a single (baseline) reaction time (RT) task, and dual tasks involving word reading or category naming while performing a concurrent RT task. Results supported the general depletion of resources hypothesis: RT of the tinnitus group was slower in both conditions of the Stroop task, and in the word reading and category naming conditions of the dual task. Differences were not attributable to high frequency average hearing level, anxiety, or depression.

Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 2012

Neurocognitive tests compared abilities in people with bothersome tinnitus against an age, gender, and education matched normative population. Participants between 18 and 60 years had subjective, unilateral or bilateral, non-pulsatile tinnitus for >6 months, and a Tinnitus Handicap Inventory score of ≥38. Results from a first testing session showed deficits in learning, learning rates, immediate recall of heard words, and use of a serial order encoding strategy. Initial reliance on serial order encoding and later, increased intrusion of incorrect words towards normal levels might indicate a less demanding strategy to compensate for weakness in associative memory for semantic categories.

Abstract Tinnitus may be linked to aberrant, attention-related processes.1 Reducing tinnitus annoyance may involve decreasing tinnitus’ attention-capturing properties. A broad overview is presented, to introduce the fields of attention and auditory attention toward understanding how they may contribute to tinnitus or be capitalized upon toward tinnitus remediation. A study based in the context of auditory attention and attention is presented, investigating the effect of performing attention tasks on tinnitus; toward linking attention theory with practical, tinnitus treatment.2 Results showed selective attention domain tests showed better control-group performance than the tinnitus-group for 2, focused attention tasks (p = 0.06 and p = 0.02). No significant difference was noted between tinnitus and control groups for divided attention tasks. Analysis of Comprehensive Attention Battery™ (CAB™) 3 and Tinnitus Handicap Questionnaire4 scores showed evidence (p = 0.06) for greater tinnitus handicap; hindering selective attention task execution. Findings support the hypothesis that bothersome tinnitus and underlying, aberrant central processes contribute to tinnitus perception and disrupt selective attention processes. Tinnitus questionnaire scores may be predicative, indicating less selective attention resources available to tinnitus sufferers, explaining poorer performance. Attention training for tinnitus sufferers may address such deficits. A follow-up study comparing tinnitus sufferers and controls to determine if repeat administration of an attention battery may confound results, showed practice effects are a concern.

BMJ open, 2018

Subjective tinnitus is very common and has a number of comorbid associations including depression, sleep disturbance and concentration difficulties. Concentration difficulties may be observable in people with tinnitus through poorer behavioural performance in tasks thought to measure specific cognitive domains such as attention and memory (ie, cognitive performance). Several reviews have discussed the association between tinnitus and cognition; however, none to date have investigated the association between tinnitus and cognitive performance through meta-analysis with reference to an established theoretical taxonomy. Furthermore, there has been little overlap between sets of studies that have been included in previous reviews, potentially contributing to the typically mixed findings that are reported. This systematic review aims to comprehensively review the literature using an established theoretical taxonomy and quantitatively synthesise relevant data to determine associations bet...

2015

Background and Aim: Research shows that 13 - 1 8 percent of the people suffer from tinnitus, almost 5 percent of which, have chronic o r bothersome tinnitus. Chronic tinnitus may be accompan ied by anxiety, depression, insomnia, and impairment in cognitive functions such as memory and attention. The purpose of this study wa s to compare the verbal auditory memory and divided atte ntion betwe en individuals with normal hearing in two groups of with and without tinnitus aged from 18 to 55 years old. Methods: This study were performed on 16 tinnitus patients (6 men and 10 women) aged from 23 to 53 years old and 20 healthy volunteers (3 men and 17 wo men) aged from 21 to 49 years old with normal hearing threshold s . Puret one a udiometry (PTA), Tinnitus evaluation, dichotic auditory verbal memory test (DAVMT), Randomized dichotic digits test (RDDT), and tinnitus handicap inventory (THI) were employed f or all participants. Results: Comparing the outputs of the RDDT and DAVMT tests betw...

Introduction: Chronic subjective tinnitus is associated with cognitive disruptions affecting perception, thinking, language, reasoning, problem solving, memory, visual tasks (reading) and attention. Objective: To evaluate existence of any association between tinnitus parameters and neuropsychological performance to explain cognitive processing. Materials and Methods: Study design was prospective, consisting 25 patients with idiopathic chronic subjective tinnitus and gave informed consent before planning their treatment. Neuropsychological profile included (i) performance on verbal information, comprehension, arithmetic and digit span; (ii) non-verbal performance for visual pattern completion analogies; (iii) memory performance for long-term, recent, delayed-recall, immediate-recall, verbal-retention, visualretention, visual recognition; (iv) reception, interpretation and execution for visual motor gestalt. Correlation between tinnitus onset duration/ loudness perception with neuropsychological profile was assessed by calculating Spearman's coefficient. Results: Findings suggest that tinnitus may interfere with cognitive processing especially performance on digit span, verbal comprehension, mental balance, attention & concentration, immediate recall, visual recognition and visual-motor gestalt subtests. Negative correlation between neurocognitive tasks with tinnitus loudness and onset duration indicated their association. Positive correlation between tinnitus and visual-motor gestalt performance indicated the brain dysfunction. Conclusion: Tinnitus association with non-auditory processing of verbal, visual and visuo-spatial information suggested neuroplastic changes that need to be targeted in cognitive rehabilitation.

Journal of Korean medical science, 2004

To investigate the cognitive characteristics that affect the emotional and functional distress caused by tinnitus and to decide and test the model to explain their relations, 167 patients with tinnitus, who visited Samsung Medical Center, Seoul, Korea between March 2001 and May 2002 were recruited. To examine their features related to tinnitus, the following scales were administered; Tinnitus-related basic questionnaire including dysfunctional beliefs, Tinnitus Handicap Inventory, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Anxious Thought and Tendencies, Self-Consciousness Scale, and modified 'catastrophic thought' from Coping Strategies Questionnaire. The results showed that the duration of experiencing tinnitus was 4.7 +/-7.1 yr, those who complained of hearing one sound were the most common (45.5%), and hearing sounds similarly described to whistling were the most common (22.5%). Also, there were significant correlations among tinnitus features, cognitive characteristics, and distres...

Trends in Hearing

Tinnitus is the perception of sound in the absence of a corresponding external sound source, and bothersome tinnitus has been linked to poorer cognitive performance. This review comprehensively quantifies the association between tinnitus and different domains of cognitive performance. The review protocol was preregistered and published in a peer-reviewed journal. The review and analyses were reported according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-analysis guidelines. Peer-reviewed literature was searched using electronic databases to find studies featuring participants with tinnitus who had undertaken measures of cognitive performance. Studies were assessed for quality and categorized according to an established cognitive framework. Random-effects meta-analyses were performed on various cognitive domains with potential moderator variables assessed where possible. Thirty-eight records were included in the analysis from a total of 1,863 participants. Analyses sh...

Behavioural brain research, 2014

Tinnitus can be defined as the perception of noxious disabling internal sounds in the absence of external stimulation. While most individuals with tinnitus show some habituation to these internal sounds, many of them experience significant daily life impairments. There is now convincing evidence that impairment in attentional processes may be involved in tinnitus, particularly by hampering the habituation mechanism related to the prefrontal cortex activity. However, it is thus still unclear whether this deficit is an alteration of alerting and orienting attentional abilities, or the consequence of more general alteration in the executive control of attention. In the present study, 20 tinnitus patients were compared to 20 matched healthy controls using the Attention Network Test, to clarify which attentional networks, among alerting, orienting, and executive networks, show differences between the groups. The results showed that patients with tinnitus do not present a general attentio...

Audiology and Neurotology, 2004

A current idea about the persistence of tinnitus is that fixation of this phantom auditory perception in the central auditory system may be influenced by attention to it. The present study investigated the mechanisms of involuntary attention and analysed performance in categorising sounds in tinnitus, simulated-tinnitus and control subjects. The sounds were presented in one ear and were preceded by presentation of frequent and deviant stimuli in the other ear. The results showed classical attention capture by deviant stimuli. In addition, the unilateral tinnitus subjects responded more accurately in the tinnitus ear than in the non-tinnitus ear. In contrast, the 'simulated-tinnitus' group showed no difference in the results between the ear where the tinnitus simulation was presented and the opposite ear. These findings suggest a difficulty in attention directing when the attention location coincides with the tinnitus ear and provides evidence for an attention focus on the tinnitus ear.