Tinnitus Does Not Interfere with Auditory and Speech Perception

Good news, according to this paper published a couple of days ago, 45 tinnitus patients were compared with 27 normal hearing counterparts and both had similar performances in temporal, spectral, intensive, masking and speech-in-noise perception tasks.

Bad news, one more reason for tinnitus not to be taken seriously.

Are there other points to be taken out from this? What should we learn? @FGG?

The study was done by Fan-Gang Zeng, PhD, UC Irvine, a member of American Tinnitus Association's global Scientific Advisory.

Read the paper here:
Tinnitus Does Not Interfere with Auditory and Speech Perception

 

Maybe it's just me, but I would have expected tinnitus not to block out other sounds when degree of hearing loss was controlled for. Most people hear well with an annoying "eeeeeee" (or whatever your flavor is) overlaying everything.

 

And here's me no longer able to hear sounds that I could just five years ago when my tinnitus wasn't so loud. Good thing we have such studies to point out that it isn't the tinnitus that's to blame, it's... what? Aliens from outer space? Sonic weapons from hostile countries? Delusional thinking?