Musical auditory training and cognitive auditory training: effects on the perception of tinnitus disorder.

Only 29 people finished, split unevenly across the groups (13, 8 and 8), and 10 more dropped out before the end. The authors call this a preliminary study, and differences this small between groups are easy to produce by chance. The musical training group started with much less tinnitus handicap than the placebo group (median 31 versus 66), so its better handicap score after treatment cannot be attributed to the training. The placebo group also improved on annoyance and handicap. Everyone in the study had weeks of one-to-one contact with a researcher, and that attention may explain much of the improvement in all three groups rather than the specific exercises. People were allocated by the order they arrived for care rather than by a genuine random draw, and the groups ended up different sizes. Nothing measured the brain or the hearing pathway directly, for example auditory evoked potentials. Only rating scales and a questionnaire were used. Outcomes were measured two weeks after treatment ended, so the study says nothing about whether any change lasted. The reporting of the loudness comparison between the two training groups is inconsistent: the paper reports a significant difference (p = 0.011) and then states that the same comparison showed no difference (p = 1.000).

The authors declare nothing to declare for financial support and report no conflicts of interest. The funding statement appears in both English and Portuguese with the same content.

Do not conclude that auditory training is what helped these patients. The placebo group, who watched silent films and listened to Mozart with the same weekly face-to-face contact, also improved on annoyance and quality of life, and the two active trainings did not differ from each other on annoyance or handicap. Do not read the musical training group's better handicap score than placebo as an effect of musical training either, because that group started with lower handicap scores before treatment began.