Tinnitus Associated with Complex Cortical Derangements

"“It really set the light bulb off for us to see that tinnitus isn’t just the perception of noise; it’s all of these cortical derangements,” Piccirillo says. “It’s almost as if the auditory center has hijacked other parts of the brain, causing it to focus too much on the noise.”"

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Professor of otolaryngology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Dr.Piccirillo, MD and his neurobiology colleagues have found evidence that MRI scans of the brains of patients with tinnitus differ in important ways from the brain scans of persons without tinnitus. They found major differences in a variety of neural networks responsible for hearing, vision, sensation and short-term memory, among others.

“It really set the light bulb off for us to see that tinnitus isn’t just the perception of noise; it’s all of these cortical derangements,” Piccirillo says. “It’s almost as if the auditory center has hijacked other parts of the brain, causing it to focus too much on the noise.”