Is There a Correlation Between High Intelligence and Tinnitus Being More Bothersome?

This is something that has crossed my mind a few times. I’m aware that intelligence comes in many shapes and forms, from emotional to artistic, to logical and various others.

One thing I have noticed, anecdotally, is that many sufferers seem to be high functioning individuals with either a high emotional IQ, or a high logical IQ.

Is there any data that suggests that intelligent people are more likely to be adversely affected by tinnitus?

Some of the earliest research I ever did suggested that there could be a link with how we emotionally process our tinnitus. It's theorised that signals travel from the ear to the auditory cortex, caudate and putamen, and then make their way to other regions of the brain where more sophisticated processing takes place. This involves memory, and our brain interpreting the meaning of the sound, whilst giving it emotional significance.

So as I said above: are intelligent people more likely to acquire - or suffer with - intrusive tinnitus? Are some people’s brains simply wired up to hyper-analyse all incoming sensory stimuli?

I’m aware that people’s tinnitus can change through time, as mine has, but is this representative of maladaptive plasticity over time? Are some people more susceptible?

 

I know there definitely is a correlation with anxiety or high levels of stress accompanied by acoustic trauma (if it is acoustic trauma related of course). That's why veterans are very prone to getting it.

 

This seems quite logical. Similarly I've noticed that many of those on this site with severe/intrusive tinnitus are/were musicians and audiophiles. Although of course that could be due to musicians being circumstantially more likely to acquire tinnitus, and to its being more life-affecting due to its obvious negative affect on the music experience.

 

Not sure about that @Ed209.

My brain is always active, I'm quite a forward and positive thinker and anxiety and stress don't really bother me.

I'm good at looking into things and problem solving but always out to help others and put others first.

Great at sorting out problems, arguments, coping strategies, team work and safeguarding children, behaviour management and seeing every side of a situation, looking after others' mental wellbeing.

I don't have a high IQ and my spelling is crap and left handed...

Does that affect my tinnitus, I don't think so, I'm just a natural bubbly person in my own comfort zone.

Meniere's is my enemy regarding tinnitus, not my brain....

love glynis

 

Absolutely, the anxiety and stress part is a big contributing factor. We know this anecdotally, but it hasn’t been proven scientifically as far as I know.

Is there a fundamental difference in how a person’s brain is functioning at the point damage occurs? The gating hypothesis is an interesting one. What makes one person acquire intrusive, life changing T, and another person with the same level of cellular damage, not?

The brain is far too complex to be fully understood and we are nowhere near understanding many of the mechanisms.

It’s merely an observation of mine over the years. Many people who claim their T bothers them seem likely to be intelligent or have moderately high IQs. There’s likely nothing in this but I’d love to hear people’s opinions. I note that intelligent people are more likely to be inward thinking, and are more likely to let small things bother them. Is there a fundamental difference between brains that have bothersome tinnitus and brains that don’t?

Just some late night pondering.

 

I hear you, Glynis. I’ve been thinking about this for a while and realise that it’s far too simple a question. But at the heart of it, my thoughts come down to wondering why some brains let the noise take over and others don’t. I sometimes think about stuff like this and my curiosity takes over.

A lot of my mates have the same kind of exposure to noise that I have. Same bands and same social lives growing up, etc. Of my close friends only two of us have intrusive tinnitus. The rest of my band didn’t/haven’t. We obviously have similar damage, but their brains never developed the piercing noise. Something struck me about my emotional attachment to the noise when I first wondered if it had got louder. It’s a time in my life I’ll never forget, because as my obsession grew, the noise went incredibly loud in my head.

Did I process my thoughts in a fundamentally different way / is my brain working differently?

 

My husband and both sons are epileptic and on medication.
Hubby is on Mysoline,
Eldest son on Epilem Crono,
Youngest son on Tegratol.

All three listen to loud music, go to loud places, cinema, night clubs, footy games, listen to music loud through headphones and don't have tinnitus or don't believe they will get it by doing it.

Could the medication be protecting them?

I don't know.

love glynis

@Steve @Markku @David

 

My ENT said something along these lines a couple months back. But high IQ doesn't necessarily mean anything.

 

I’ve never been a big fan of IQ testing for the simple reason that you cannot truly judge someone’s mental abilities by only testing them based on their logical ability.

As Einstein once said: if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

That said, I’m talking more about high functioning individuals who are curious by nature and show a tendency towards inward thinking. The brain learns new skills by connecting neural networks across the brain. Are some of us predisposed to acquiring bothersome tinnitus via a maladaptive process in the brain?

 

I just found this:

https://www.alliedacademies.org/art...tus-with-neurocognitive-performance-8168.html

Not exactly what I was getting at but interesting nonetheless.

 

@Ed209 my answer from personal experience working with three different highly intelligent (males) did have a more difficult time dealing with tinnitus. One was an engineer. One was a Mensa member with a very high IQ and the ability to memorize anything and everything and analyze anything - but financially poor losing his job because of tinnitus. One was a successful rich financial company owner with a wonderful family two young kids and a beautiful wife.

The latter two mentioned are now gone. Which is why I disappeared for a long time. They had difficulty accepting the noise and could not find ways to cope. They studied and studied it. Went to different clinics and doctors.

One was left destitute financially with no family. One was rich with family.

 

There are studies that link higher rates of depression with clever people. Could there be some crossover with other disorders of the brain?

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/health/intelligence-mental-illness-iq-study-findings-depression-a8005801.html?amp

 

I think no. Stupid people can be bothered just as smart people.

 

The question is is it more prevalent in clever people?

Of course, anyone can get it and be seriously affected by it; just like anyone can become depressed, also.

 

The cases were not so much about depression but the inability to be able to adapt to the intrusive noise in their brains. The depression in one case was because of the financial situation worsening and lack of money for medical attention. He did have other serious health issues. The intellect was still there.

It is difficult for me to explain...

I remember one saying over and over how and why and it makes no sense. His intellect level could not deal with it.

But, I hope this does not come across that we are less smart.

 

Maybe an intelligent person would be more prone to being OCD about it and live in regrets.

 

Yes I think that was (is) a big part of dealing with tinnitus.

 

One of the most exclusive jobs in the world gives the opportunity to operate and be onboard one of the noisiest things in the world: Space shuttle.

 

Dr. Robert Aaron Levine said that tinnitus can be considered a "chemical inbalance" of the DCN and tinnitus occurs when the DCN is "GABA deficient".

GABAergic deficits also seem to correlate with several mental illnesses: MDD, anxiety, depression, and so on.

• The GABAergic Deficit Hypothesis of Major Depressive Disorder https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3412149/
• GABAergic control of depression-related brain states https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4784429/
• Brain gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) abnormalities in bipolar disorder https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5504910/

 

It’s also commonly known that some individuals on the autistic spectrum have hyperacusis.

There’s also a study which says people with Asperger’s are more prone to tinnitus and hyperacusis:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/26243502/

This is really flimsy of me and not very scientific at all, but I know many people with Asperger’s are often more intelligent. They are also inward thinkers who often don’t like change.

This part in particular also correlates - on some level - with the recent TT study:

‘Future research is warranted to provide insight into the possible correlation between tinnitus and hyperacusis symptoms and the abnormal social interactions observed in this group.’

 

That's really interesting. And strange.

 

Broad generalizations are a nope in my book

 

Was curious to see whether the GABAergic system works differently in autistic people and found these studies:

• Reduced GABAergic Action in the Autistic Brain
• GABA System Dysfunction in Autism and Related Disorders: From Synapse to Symptoms
• Alterations of GABAergic signaling in autism spectrum disorders
• Glutamate and GABA in autism spectrum disorder—a translational magnetic resonance spectroscopy study in man and rodent models

 

You’ll also find GABA is lower in intelligent people:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5605555/

I’ll post a couple of excerpts below:

Intelligence is a measure of general cognitive functioning capturing a wide variety of different cognitive functions. It has been hypothesized that the brain works to minimize the resources allocated toward higher cognitive functioning. Thus, for the intelligent brain, it may be that not simply more is better, but rather, more efficient is better. Energy metabolism supports both inhibitory and excitatory neurotransmission processes. Indeed, in glutamatergic and GABAergic neurons, the primary energetic costs are associated with neurotransmission. We tested the hypothesis that minimizing resources through the excitation–inhibition balance encompassing gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and glutamate may be beneficial to general cognitive functioning using 7 T 1H-MRS in 23 healthy individuals (male/female = 16/7, 27.7 ± 5.3 years). We find that a higher working memory index is significantly correlated with a lower GABA to glutamate ratio in the frontal cortex and with a lower glutamate level in the occipital cortex. Thus, it seems that working memory performance is associated with the excitation–inhibition balance in the brain.

A higher WMI (working memory index) was significantly correlated with a lower GABA/Glu ratio (GABA/Cr to Glu/Cr ratio) in the frontal cortex


You could correlate this with the higher prevalence of people with Asperger’s having tinnitus and hyperacusis. I believe there are aspects to some of this circumstantial evidence that suggest intelligence could be a factor for some people. Although, it’s really just me being curious at this stage.

 

Just my curiosity at work.

 

Maybe there are some hearing loss and tinnitus studies that cover for example commercial airline pilots. They have gone through long training, need to memorize and control various things all the time, and work in relatively noisy environment. They most likely also endure some work related stress, and they can have widely changing working hours.

 

The Tinnitus expert I visited in San Francisco said something along those lines (but not with these exact same words: he mentioned musicians, people who are detail-oriented, and perfectionists).

 

That’s me in a nutshell

 

Me to bro - musos create every sound nuance xx

Every single note has a start, a middle, an end, an intensity, an emotion, a meaning;
and all as we are thinking on our feet....!!
I’ve just realised Ed - we’re ‘rudy’ geniuses...xx

(.....er.....if we do say so ourselves...etc....)

 

You ask two questions in the OP and I think they need to be kept separate.

Are intelligent people more likely to acquire intrusive tinnitus?
Are intelligent people more likely to suffer with intrusive tinnitus?

The first question is something I've seen suggested around here and it bothers me. The question implies that tinnitus is psychological, not physical. I got tinnitus from a split-second accident. It was physical and the tinnitus was instantaneous. There are sounds so loud that anyone who hears them will get tinnitus. The level of the sound doesn't care if that person is an anxious-type or an intellectual-type. If you hear a sound of a certain decibal level, you get tinnitus: whether you're anxious or easy-going, intelligent or stupid, your ears were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The second question is a meaningful one. Perhaps intelligent people (or for that matter, anxious people) are more bothered by their tinnitus. I have a history of being annoyed by certain types of noises. If I am trying to read or concentrate, the sound of people talking or television or other people's music would infuriate me no matter how low the volume was. The fact was, I could hear it, and if I could hear it, it was breaking my concentration. Coincidentally, I had largely gotten over the problem of being so hyper sensitive to other people's sounds. Then I got tinnitus from that one loud sound.

I think there might be a relationship between intelligence and being bothered by tinnitus. Of course this is an attractive theory since it means we're all highly intelligent here.

Are you familiar with Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron"?