Registered Report: Are anticipatory predictions enhanced in tinnitus and independent of hearing loss?use asterix (*) to get italics

L. Reisinger, G. Demarchi, S. Rösch, E. Trinka, J. Obleser, N. WeiszPlease use the format "First name initials family name" as in "Marie S. Curie, Niels H. D. Bohr, Albert Einstein, John R. R. Tolkien, Donna T. Strickland"

2023

<p>Phantom perceptions occur without any identifiable environmental or bodily source. The mechanisms and key drivers behind phantom perceptions like tinnitus are not well understood. The dominant view suggests that tinnitus results from hyperactivity in the auditory pathway following hearing damage. This “altered gain“ framework, however, has explanatory shortcomings, motivating the pursuit of alternative perspectives. For example, researchers have tried to explain tinnitus within a predictive-coding framework. Supporting this view and commensurate with strong perceptual priors, a magnetoencephalography (MEG) study recently reported that individuals with tinnitus engage more strongly in anticipatory sensory predictions compared to controls without tinnitus. While this pattern did not correlate with hearing loss within the tinnitus group, any correlation among individuals without tinnitus is unknown because they were not given audiometric testing. This registered report aims to close this gap. We will use an established passive-listening paradigm, in which the regularity (i.e. predictability) of pure-tone sequences is either random or ordered. Analyses will encompass data from participants with tinnitus and control subjects without tinnitus, matched not only for age and gender, but importantly also in terms of hearing loss. Data from 40 participants with tinnitus and 40 control subjects is already available, and data have not yet been processed. We will utilize previously established decoding-based measures to quantify the extent to which individuals engage in anticipatory auditory prediction. Our hypothesis is that we will replicate our previous main finding: tinnitus and control individuals differ in the extent to which carrier-frequency-specific neural activity patterns become pre-activated, supporting the hypothesis that chronic tinnitus is associated with dysregulated predictive neural processing. This would lay the foundation for any later works that need to disentangle whether dysregulated predictive processes are a side product of tinnitus or rather pose a risk factor for developing tinnitus.</p>

auditory perceptions, tinnitus, predictions, decoding, hearing loss, MEG

NonePlease indicate the methods that may require specialised expertise during the peer review process (use a comma to separate various required expertises).

Life Sciences

2023-01-03 08:35:12

Chris Chambers