Poll: How Many People Have Gaze-Evoked Tinnitus?

In today's episode of trying to figure out my problem, I decided to lean in on one of my symptoms: gaze-evoked tinnitus. For a while, I didn't think it was abnormal given the circumstances: I have severe tinnitus and hyperacusis; it shouldn't be shocking that little things make it worse.

But after some googling, I found out that it's pretty rare. Moreover, in the search engine on Tinnitus Talk, I only found one thread on it (https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...-eye-exercises-for-ringing-of-the-ears.29234/).

It's especially interesting to me since my first symptom (along with the tinnitus and hyperacusis) was severe balance problems. To be clear, I don't know if my problem is my hair cells, synapses, audio vestibular nerve, DCN, IC, etc. My problem was not caused by noise, but rather a chronic illness.

TLDR: I am posting a poll here. How many people have gaze-evoked tinnitus (in addition to normal tinnitus)? By that, I mean with your head stationary and only moving your eyes from side to side or up and down the tinnitus pulses (it's obvious if you have it, like a zapping sensation).

 

My tinnitus specialist told me about a case like that during our first meeting. Claimed he also had someone that said moving their index finger did it too.

 

Have you ever googled types of third window syndrome? There are several types. Some SCCD patients reported hearing their eye movements (and/or other sounds) I am not sure what it should sound like, if it's "pulsing" or "zapping" or other sounds, I just remember some of third window syndrome patients could hear their eye movements but I guess it depends on where the dehiscence is.

 

The muscles that control the eye are innervated by the sixth cranial nerve, which gets pretty close to the TM junction. It's quite common that muscle activity in this area can seem to modulate tinnitus; something like 80% of tinnitus patients can do it with head or neck movements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abducens_nerve


As not a doctor I have always assumed gaze-evoked tinnitus is just a somewhat unusual kind of somatic tinnitus; it's still just somatosensory data being turned into audio.

 

Thanks for the reply! I've looked into superior canal dehiscence. Unfortunately, this isn't exactly what I have going on. I can't hear my eyes moving or anything like that. It's more like, I have normal, constant tinnitus, but if I move my eyes, there's a short, few second spike in the tinnitus -- like some sort of a calculation is being made in my inner ear. The noise is tinnitus, not my eyes.

 

Thanks so much for that helpful information. Yeah, much like you, I didn't think much of it because it seemed reasonable to me that little movements could trigger tinnitus. What really caught my eye (no pun intended) was the fact that it occurs with just eye movement, with a stationary head -- meaning it's not just some small movement in blood flow from moving my head, but actual information from changing my vision. This is consistent with the balance problems I have had at the beginning.

 

Interesting. So is it due to nerves being touched by the TM or by other nerve?

 

This video does a good job of explaining the theory behind it, at a level of scientific detail I cannot even understand in some places because I don't understand how spike-timing dependent plasticity really works mechanically, but, even so, found this very interesting:

"The Neural Bases and Neuroengineering of...

This research is the basis of the bimodal stimulation treatment being developed at the University of Michigan, which works along similar lines to Leniere.

 

I tried this a few times. Rolling my eyes all the way up increases one of my tones. My tinnitus is likely a combination of chronic congestion issues and neck trauma/injury/after years of bad posture.

 

Hey @Backpacker how are you holding up with the low frequency tinnitus?

 

I also have this. It’s annoying because when my eyes roll back when I go to sleep my tinnitus changes pitch. Makes it almost impossible to sleep unmedicated...