In this project, Professor Sarah Verhulst at Ghent University, Germany, aims to uncover the different mechanisms linked to tinnitus and hyperacusis, to help improve diagnosis and develop treatments.
Project start date: April 2026
Project end date: January 2027
About the project
Tinnitus and hyperacusis (increased sensitivity to everyday sounds) are common and often co-occurring problems that can seriously affect someone’s quality of life. However, their exact causes and the brain activity associated with them, and how these differ from each other, remain unclear.
Many people with these symptoms have normal results on standard hearing tests, suggesting that the damage lies deeper in the auditory system, in what is called “hidden hearing loss”. Without understanding these hidden processes, it will remain difficult to develop effective and targeted treatments.
In this project, the researchers aim to uncover how neural (brain and nerve cell) responses to sound differ between people with tinnitus and/or hyperacusis.
How it works
The researchers will test four groups of young adults with normal hearing:
- people with hyperacusis only
- people with tinnitus only
- people with both hyperacusis and tinnitus
- people with neither hyperacusis nor tinnitus (as a ‘control’ group)
The researchers will record how sound signals travel from the ear to a part of the brain called the brainstem and back using non-invasive measures. They expect to find different patterns of nerve cell activity in hyperacusis compared to tinnitus, depending on the level of sound.
These patterns will reflect how the auditory system becomes overactive when someone has hyperacusis or tinnitus. The researchers expect to see this overactivity constantly in people with tinnitus, even in quiet conditions, and only when sounds are louder in people with hyperacusis.
What will this research achieve?
By identifying the hidden differences between tinnitus and hyperacusis, this study could lead to the development of more precise diagnostic tools and lay the foundation for future sound-based or brain stimulation treatments.
This research is essential to move beyond symptom management toward real, mechanism-based therapies that improve life for people with tinnitus and hyperacusis.
About the researcher
Dr Sarah Verhulst is Professor at Ghent University where she leads the Hearing Technology Lab. She was awarded the RNID Innovation Seed Fund in 2026.
Through the research in my lab, we aim to provide early diagnostics and improved treatments for early-onset hearing loss, advocate for prevention in policy, and develop augmented hearing solutions that can be integrated into next-generation, low-cost hearables to relieve symptoms.”
