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?

 

Opposite conclusion.

Tinnitus impairs segregation of competing speech in normal-hearing listeners

Many tinnitus patients report difficulties understanding speech in noise or competing talkers, despite having “normal” hearing in terms of audiometric thresholds. The interference caused by tinnitus is more likely central in origin. Release from informational masking (more central in origin) produced by competing speech may further illuminate central interference due to tinnitus. In the present study, masked speech understanding was measured in normal hearing listeners with or without tinnitus. Speech recognition thresholds were measured for target speech in the presence of multi-talker babble or competing speech. For competing speech, speech recognition thresholds were measured for different cue conditions (i.e., with and without target-masker sex differences and/or with and without spatial cues). The present data suggest that tinnitus negatively affected masked speech recognition even in individuals with no measurable hearing loss. Tinnitus severity appeared to especially limit listeners’ ability to segregate competing speech using talker sex differences. The data suggest that increased informational masking via lexical interference may tax tinnitus patients’ central auditory processing resources.

Full article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-76942-1

 

Association Between Tinnitus Pitch and Consonant Recognition in Noise

Abstract

Purpose
Difficulties in speech-in-noise understanding are often reported in individuals with tinnitus. Building on our previous findings that speech-in-noise performance is correlated with subjective loudness of tinnitus, this study aimed to investigate the effect of tinnitus pitch on consonant recognition in noise.

Method
Pure-tone audiometry and the Quick Speech-in-Noise Test were conducted on 66 participants categorized into four groups by their hearing sensitivity and self-report of tinnitus. Consonant recognition scores at various frequency ranges were obtained at the 5 dB SNR condition of the Quick Speech-in-Noise Test. Participants with tinnitus also completed a tinnitus pitch-matching procedure. Correlation analyses were conducted between tinnitus pitch and the frequency of the worst consonant recognition, and the error rates based on word and sentence position were compared.

Results
Regardless of hearing sensitivity, tinnitus pitch did not correlate with the frequency of the worst consonant recognition. Sentence-initial word recognition was affected by hearing loss, whereas sentence-final word recognition was not affected by hearing loss or tinnitus. In contrast to individuals with normal hearing, participants with hearing loss varied in full-sentence recognition, with those reporting tinnitus exhibiting significantly higher error rates.

Conclusions
The findings suggest that the effect of tinnitus on consonant recognition in noise may involve higher level functions more than perceptual characteristics of tinnitus. Furthermore, for individuals with speech-in-noise concerns, clinical evaluation should address both hearing sensitivity and the presence of tinnitus. Future speech-in-noise studies should incorporate cognitive tests and, possibly, brain imaging to parse out the contribution of cognitive factors, such as cognitive control, in speech-in-noise in tinnitus.

Full article: https://pubs.asha.org/doi/full/10.1044/2020_AJA-20-00050