Scanner noise does not mask chronic tinnitus perception during imaging

Evidence

In order to control subjects’ attentional state, they were asked to focus on the fixation cross throughout the imaging time for resting-state runs, or watch four “emotional” 3-min movie fragments (video and audio) for fixed-state runs, while being scanned simultaneously. To ensure that the ambient noise did not eliminate the patients’ tinnitus, they were asked to rate their tinnitus several times (before, between and after imaging runs) on a 0–10 scale, where 0 indicated no perception of tinnitus at all and 10 indicated the strongest tinnitus imaginable. Ratings did not decrease significantly throughout the session (conversely, some patient’s indicated that it systematically increased with stress and fatigue) and never reached zero (2 was the lowest rating). — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 2709

To ensure that the ambient noise did not eliminate the patients’ tinnitus, they were asked to rate their tinnitus several times (before, between and after imaging runs) on a 0–10 scale, where 0 indicated no perception of tinnitus at all and 10 indicated the strongest tinnitus imaginable. Ratings did not decrease significantly throughout the session (conversely, some patient’s indicated that it systematically increased with stress and fatigue) and never reached zero (2 was the lowest rating). — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 2720

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does ambient scanner noise actually not mask tinnitus, or is this idiosyncratic to this cohort? This bears on whether tinnitus is modulated by masking sound at all.
• SEED: Angle: the failure of loud noise to mask tinnitus reveals something about how tinnitus is generated centrally rather than peripherally.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 2709; Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 2720