The Impact of Tinnitus on Working Memory Capacity

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14992027.2020.1822550

Conclusion
Tinnitus was not related to WM scores in adults with and without tinnitus when corrected for hearing thresholds, anxiety, and depression; but tinnitus handicap was related to some WM scores in adults with tinnitus when analysed with hearing thresholds, anxiety, and depression. The significant corrections observed warrant further investigation of the possible relationship between high-frequency hearing thresholds and WM scores.​

I think it's more about the distress than the tinnitus. What do you think?

 

I don't care about all this stuff telling me how I feel or how it impacts me. I know that I will be fine if someone turns the tinnitus volume down and makes my ears stop hurting.

 

In my case, the effect on memory and ability to think comes mainly from the anxiety caused by tinnitus and hyperacusis. Once I got that under control, my memory and thinking became largely normal, though I still exhaust faster than usual and once exhausted of course can't think efficiently anymore, so I need more time to relax.

 

This is what I would call a soft study. Or in other words, useless.

 

Yeah, for me it's the fact that tinnitus and hyperacusis have killed my dreams and have taken away any chance of a fulfilling or happy life. I don't really care for the ringing, but I also don't care about these studies telling me how it makes me feel. I know how I feel. And I'd like my tinnitus and hyperacusis to stop so I can leave my house and listen to music.

 

The general problem I find is that it is a 30% tax across the board. 30% energy, 30% patience, 30% focus, 30% positivity, just basically a 30% hair cut across the top. Whatever the primary cause is (the experience of the endless noise impacting secondary systems or something neurological that happens directly because of the condition), the net effect is a diminishment.

 

Haven’t tinnitus and hearing loss been linked to a higher chance of developing dementia?

 

Quite certain this is yet another case of correlation not causation.

A study might conclude that a lot of people with tinnitus and hearing loss also had dementia, therefore: tinnitus and hearing loss put an individual at higher risk of developing dementia. Said study will then be published and printed in a newspaper without anyone applying the common sense logic; that the majority of people with tinnitus and hearing loss are older and thus prone to dementia anyway.

Mainstream outlets produce this kind of brain fart more often than you'd think.

 

@Damocles, my thoughts are the same. To be honest I'm afraid to read more about the subject because I have both tinnitus and hearing loss.

When I had mild tinnitus I could sleep and concentrate easily. I completed 3 years of university with good grades and I had neither anxiety nor depression but severe tinnitus is absolutely another thing. I quit university since I can neither sleep nor concentrate. Mild to severe tinnitus is what having a headache is to a feeling your head is going to explode. I don't know how I'm going to overcome this, I was happy, about to finish my last year and becoming a researcher in psychology but now I'm attending a course to become a caregiver for people with mental illness. Life goes on... But why I have to give up on what makes me happy? I'm feeling low, we need a cure.

 

I think this is a bivariate correlation. Means there is a third factor which is relevant. The hearing loss and tinnitus cause social withdrawal, and this leads to an increased risk of dementia, because less social interaction means less input for the brain.

 

I think if hearing input is distorted or altered it has an impact on working memory, as the hearing data we get feels slower, distorted, harder to make out etc... so the processing just goes slower.

 

"The Impact of Tinnitus on Working Memory Capacity" from the International Journal of Audiology:

Perhaps a study should be done on "The Impact of Having a Pit Bull With His Fangs Imbedded in Your Neck When You Are Trying To Write Complicated Calculus Equations."

The sheer idiocy of so much highly vaunted scientific research.

 

I would definitely agree with that. Before this rubbish I was always wanting to do new things, had lots of good times with my friends and had a social group and activities I did away from my partner and daughter. That's all gone now... All I can do is the stuff with my immediate family and even that is limited. No more meals out, no cinema, no events, just stuff where I'm not around too many people or noise. I absolutely hate what this has done to me and the impact it has on my loved ones because of what I have to do to manage. But I don't need / want to read about studies about all the other negative stuff associated with it. Research should focus on finding an effective treatment. I want my life back, not a restricted version of it... As am sure everyone here does.

 

Thank you for this. I should have done my due diligence and done more research, but I was honestly worried that people who are more prone to T are also more prone to dementia. Thanks for clarifying!

 

@ColinUK, agree. I feel exactly the same. Today I also quit the caregiving course... I can't even concentrate to write this. I'm in a bus station in the middle of the city and I can hear my tinnitus over the engine of all the buses (it's a big station, probably there are like 15 with the engine on waiting to leave, plus the ones that pass by ) and all the city sounds. I have a car but since I can't sleep and the course starts at 8 am - it's 1 hour from my house - I leave at 7 am and I can't drive because I'm extremely sleepy. I will take a break of everything and try meds, sport and a good diet. I just hope to not become homeless.

 

The way my stomach turned when I read this. I've been isolating myself socially since before I got tinnitus. Guess I'm fucked in the future even if my tinnitus and hyperacusis do resolve!

 

It's very unlikely you'll ever manage the levels of social deprivation required for this to become an eventuality. Unless you're very well off and can afford to have necessities delivered to outside your door for the rest of your life, or a farmer living in the middle of nowhere...

As long as you're keeping your brain "active" (i.e. learning something, doing puzzles, playing strategic/platform video games, having arguments with @linearb on Tinnitus Talk...) and maintaining small amounts of human interaction, you're not at any great risk.

 

And anyway, in ten years we will all sit together and laugh, cured with our Elon Musk brain implants. So what the heck

 

There are several members on here I really hope to meet one day @Hamsti.

Let's you me and @Christiaan meet up in Germany some time, and see if we can find that Schultenbräu somewhere. It'll be like a treasure hunt; we can even invite The Musk! (although he'll probably locate it immediately using some new satellite he's invented, and make the whole thing kind of boring).

 

I have a headache, a tight head and a sense of unreality.

 

There was commentary put out from some about how hearing loss leads to dementia through the recent results of a fairly sizeable study and some groups (with very vested interests) commented about this.

There has been further commentary come out from parties with relevant expertise and knowledge on these matters such as an expert Otologist who works with CIs in Australia who actually considered the link to not be as strong and definitive as the study claimed it to be by saying it was about 8% more likely you would get dementia while other things/factors were still often at least 4% more likely to lead to dementia also.

As a rule this expert said that while it might be a potential cause, it certainly isn't currently conclusive./

 

I agree; when my distress was out of control I could barely work; when I got that under control, despite no real changes in the tinnitus, I've changed jobs twice, learned a bunch of new programming languages, etc.

I find my loud, piercing tinnitus annoying but when it's associated with significant distress it becomes practically unmanageable.