Hari Bharadwaj, Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh, will present "Physiological Characterization of Persistent Tinnitus".
Meeting ID: 432 634 0458
Abstract: Tinnitus is the perception of sounds (e.g., ringing, buzzing, hissing, roaring) without an external acoustic stimulus. Roughly 10 percent of the adult population of the United States has experienced tinnitus episodes lasting at least five minutes in the past year. Furthermore, an estimated 20% of audiological visits to urban clinical centers occur with tinnitus as the primary complaint. Although age, noise exposure, and audiometric hearing loss are risk factors for tinnitus, the connection is indirect, prompting speculation about the intervening neural processes that may be more proximally related to the percept. This presentation will consider different theoretical accounts that have been proposed for tinnitus perception in the literature and describe preliminary data from our work in support of each. Specific aims for a planned research proposal that seeks to document the physiological characteristics of persistent tinnitus will be discussed with the goal of obtain critical feedback from the audience.
