Attenuation of Positive Valence in Ratings of Affective Sounds by Tinnitus Patients.
Annett Szibor, Jarmo Lehtimäki, Jukka Ylikoski and 3 others
PMID 31415234WHAT IT FOUND
Ten tinnitus patients rated positive sounds below the reference values, and their pupils dilated more to negative sounds than to positive or neutral sounds.
Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation did not change ratings or pupil responses.
Key findings
01Positive sounds were rated 1.45 points below the normative valence value on a 1 to 9 scale.
02Negative sounds elicited larger pupil dilation than neutral and positive sounds, and neutral and positive sounds did not differ.
03Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation did not change subjective ratings or pupil response characteristics.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Only ten tinnitus patients were studied, and no non-tinnitus control group was included. The study compared patient ratings with IADS normative values, not with matched controls tested at the same time. Depressive symptoms were not measured, so the lower positive ratings may reflect comorbid depression rather than tinnitus itself. The comparison block had no electrical stimulation, and blinding or sham details are not reported. The pupil data did not show larger responses to positive sounds than to neutral sounds, so the pupillometry result was narrower than the original hypothesis.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that tinnitus itself reduces positive affect. The study did not measure depression, and comorbid depression could explain the lower ratings of positive sounds.