The AudioNotch Tinnitus Treatment Blog


Detecting Your Tinnitus Tone: Scientific Research

Written by AudioNotch Team on September 30, 2012

Categories: Tinnitus

There are multiple methods available for detecting a user’s tinnitus tone. Detecting a user’s tinnitus tone can be done manually, with computer-aided guidance, or even with the aid of an audiologist in a sound booth in select audiology clinics. This particular study compared three alternative methods:

The most prominent pitch of tinnitus was measured in 10 subjects with sensorineural tinnitus. The pitch was determined with three different psychophysical procedures in the ear ipsilateral to the tinnitus; an Adaptive Method (Bracketing), a Method of Limits (ascending and descending), and the Method of Adjustment. Each procedure involved equating the pitch of a pure tone to the most prominent tinnitus pitch, and was repeated seven times on each subject.

There seems to be agreement in the scientific literature on the topic of tinnitus pitch matching: there is variation in a user’s ability to effectively match their tinnitus pitch to a computer generated tone. As a consequence, the researchers had this recommendation:

Because some patients are unreliable in their pitch matching we suggest repeating the match seven to nine times.

This is in line with AudioNotch’s treatment plan: we also recommend that user’s regularly “re-tune” their tinnitus tone (i.e. re-detect their tinnitus tone).

Cheers,

AudioNotch