Effects of severe bothersome tinnitus on cognitive function measured with standardized tests

Abstract

Neurocognitive tests compared abilities in people with bothersome tinnitus against an age-, gender-, and education-matched normative population. Participants between 18 and 60 years had subjective, unilateral or bilateral, nonpulsatile tinnitus for >6 months and a Tinnitus Handicap Inventory score of ≥38. Results from a first testing session showed deficits in learning, learning rates, immediate recall of heard words, and use of a serial order encoding strategy. Initial reliance on serial order encoding and, later, increased intrusion of incorrect words towards normal levels might indicate a less demanding strategy to compensate for weakness in associative memory for semantic categories.

Keywords:

• Tinnitus
• Cognition
• Standardized tests
• Attention
• Memory

Acknowledgments

Contract grant sponsor: National Institutes of Health (NIH); Contract grant number: DC009095. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. The authors express their sincere thanks to the study participants. Declaration of interest: There are no conflicts of interest.

Notes

¹Participants enrolled in the current study were a subpopulation in Clinical Trials Registration Number: NCT00567892, December 3, 2007.

²PTT right: mean 23.5 ± 22 dB, range 0–70 dB; left: mean 17.9 ± 14.9 dB, range 0–75 dB; SRT right: mean 18.2 ± 19.9 dB, range 0–80 dB; left: mean 12.4 ± 8.5 dB, range 0–25 dB.