Pathophysiology, Psycho-emotional and Cognitive Functioning Associated With Tinnitus

Tinnitus (known as "ringing in the ears") is a disabling medical condition. Its psychosocial impact is substantial, including anxiety, depression, stress, irritability, concentration and sleep disorder leading to detrimental effects on communication, education, professional fulfillment, mental health and quality of life. The cerebral bases of tinnitus and its consequence on human hearing health have received a lot of attention in the scientific literature. Yet, the relationship between the neurobiological dysfunction, psychological processes and clinical semiology of tinnitus remains poorly understood. Considering the current gaps in knowledge, there is a real need for clinical investigations into tinnitus-related brain changes and rigorous hearing, psycho-emotional, and cognitive assessments. the investigators recent discovery of a vulnerability to tinnitus associated with medial temporal lobe surgery (to treat refractory epilepsy) provides a new clinical model, which targets the temporal lobe regions as a tinnitus generator or mediator of its severity. The goal of this collaborative interdisciplinary study is to advance knowledge about the pathophysiology of tinnitus, as well as the socio-emotional, cognitive and psychoacoustic aspects associated to this hearing disorder. the investigators will first, characterize the subjective and self-reported hearing disorders with objective psychoacoustic, cognitive and affective measures in tinnitus sufferers and second, clarify the cerebral network underlying tinnitus and elucidate the role temporal lobe regions in the brain networks at play in surgical and non-surgical tinnitus. To this end, individuals with and without tinnitus, who had undergone or not a surgery will be compared in a 2 by 2 design. Investigating different patient cohorts with tinnitus who are well matched to both, healthy control populations and vulnerable clinical populations, without tinnitus is a valuable contribution of our proposal. Moreover, the psychological and hearing profiles of people with tinnitus will be examined in relation with their brain morphology and connectivity profiles.The project builds upon the internationally recognized leadership of the PI and her collaborators in the fields of auditory cognition and its neurobiological bases using neuropsychological, psychoacoustic, and neuroimaging methods in clinical populations. The members of the investigators consortium have all the necessary and unique expertise to carry out this innovative and interdisciplinary project.