Aberrant auditory prediction patterns robustly characterize tinnitus

• DOI: 10.7554/elife.99757
• Publication Date: 2024-08-27T16:26:16Z
• Authors: Lisa Reisinger; Gianpaolo Demarchi; Jonas Obleser; William Sedley; Marta Partyka; Juliane Schubert; Quirin Gehmacher; Sebastian Roesch; Nina Suess; Eugen Trinka; Winfried Schlee; Nathan Weisz
• Keywords: Magnetoencephalography; Neurocognitive; Predictive coding

Phantom perceptions like tinnitus occur without any identifiable environmental or bodily source. The mechanisms and key drivers behind are poorly understood. dominant framework, suggesting that results from neural hyperactivity in the auditory pathway following hearing damage, has been difficult to investigate humans reached explanatory limits. As a result, researchers have tried explain perceptual potential aberrations within more parsimonious predictive-coding framework. In two independent magnetoencephalography studies, participants passively listened sequences of pure tones with varying levels regularity (i.e. predictability) ranging random ordered. Aside being replication first study, pre-registered second including 80 participants, ensured rigorous matching status, as well age, sex, loss, between individuals tinnitus. Despite some changes details paradigm, both studies equivalently reveal group difference representation, based on multivariate pattern analysis, upcoming stimuli before their onset. These data strongly suggest engage anticipatory predictions differently controls. While observation different predictive processes is robust replicable, precise neurocognitive mechanism underlying it calls for further, ideally longitudinal, establish its role contributor to, and/or consequence of,