Impact of Tinnitus on cognitive ability in subjects with and without hearing impairment

Abstract

Introduction: Tinnitus (ringing in the ears) is a common auditory sensation that can become a newlinechronic debilitating health condition with pervasive effects on health and well-being, substantive newlineeconomic burden, and no known cure. Tinnitus is present in participants with normal hearing newlinesensitivity and with hearing impairment (Schaette and McAlpine, 2011). Tinnitus is inextricable newlinefrom auditory differentiation and provides enormous impact with reference to annoyance and newlinedistress (Lee, 2020). Therefore, a confounding effect of hearing loss on cognitive function in newlinetinnitus patients is inevitable. It is true that some generators of tinnitus in the brain may share newlinecommon resources with attention and memory generators in the brain, such as the prefrontal newlinecortex, limbic system, and hippocampus (Lee et al., 2017).