Investigation of Listening Effort in Tinnitus Patients by Providing Similar Peripheral Auditory Function With Control Group

Introduction: Prior studies comparing listening effort between tinnitus patients and healthy controls reported similar pure tone thresholds but did not comprehensively assess peripheral auditory function (PAF), which could influence central auditory processing and effort even with normal hearing. This study investigated listening effort in tinnitus while controlling for PAF. Methods: Sixteen chronic tinnitus patients and 23 matched healthy controls with normal hearing (0.125–20 kHz) were evaluated using pure-tone audiometry, visual analogue scale (VAS), Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI), matrix test (MT), auditory brainstem response (ABR), and electroencephalography (EEG). EEG alpha band activity was recorded at parietal electrodes (P3, P4, Pz) during a speech recognition task with noise-vocoded sentences; alpha power change was computed as percent change from baseline. Results: The increase in alpha band power during sentence encoding was smaller in tinnitus than controls. Tinnitus participants had higher VAS scores. No significant group differences were found for MT (50% SRT), ABR amplitude/latency, or baseline EEG alpha power. No significant correlation was observed between EEG alpha power change and THI scores. Conclusion: This is the first study to examine listening effort via EEG alpha power while controlling for hearing thresholds and PAF. Despite comparable PAF, tinnitus patients may expend more effort during listening.