Multiple Modalities of Sensory Gating Are Affected in Decompensated Tinnitus.
Jana V P Devos, Pia Brinkmann, Petra Vavami and 3 others
People with tinnitus report more difficulty filtering out irrelevant sensory input than people without tinnitus.
In the auditory domain, all tinnitus patients score higher than controls. In visual and attention domains, only those with severe tinnitus differ from controls.
Key findings
1The tinnitus group scored significantly higher on the Sensory Gating Inventory than the control group (B = 22.771, p < 0.001) after controlling for sex and age, and this held for all four subscales.
2In the auditory modality, all three groups (control, compensated, decompensated) differed significantly from each other. In the visual and focus modalities, compensated tinnitus did not differ from control, while decompensated tinnitus scored higher than both.
3A moderate correlation (r = 0.473) was found between the Sensory Gating Inventory total score and the Tinnitus Questionnaire total score, remaining significant (B = 0.146, 95% CI 0.104 to 0.187, p < 0.001) after controlling for sex, tinnitus loudness, and duration.
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How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
Cross-sectional design: the study shows an association between sensory-gating difficulty and tinnitus severity but cannot show that one causes the other or that improving gating would reduce tinnitus. All measures are self-report questionnaires. No neurophysiological or objective measure of sensory gating was included, so the findings reflect perceived difficulty rather than a measured neural process. The control group was recruited separately (from a prior validation study) and was significantly younger (M = 30 years) and more female (73.7%) than the tinnitus group (M = 54 years, 55.6% female). Analyses controlled for these, but the groups were not matched at recruitment. Participants over 65 were excluded, so the findings do not extend to older tinnitus patients, who make up a large share of clinical referrals. The Over-Inclusion subscale, which includes auditory items related to sound sensitivity, did not differ between groups. The authors suggest these items may reflect hyperacusis rather than tinnitus-specific gating, but this is speculative.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the higher Sensory Gating Inventory scores in tinnitus patients as evidence that a sensory-gating training programme will reduce tinnitus. This is a cross-sectional survey of self-reported difficulty, not an intervention trial, and no treatment was tested.
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