In this project, Professor Fatima Husain at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, investigates how mindfulness-based cognitive therapies – often recommended as treatments for tinnitus – impact the brain in measurable ways.
Project start date: September 2025
Project end date: September 2027
About the project
1 in 5 people experience distress because of their tinnitus, which can lead to depression, anxiety, difficulty sleeping, irritability, and problems with concentration. Professor Husain’s team will investigate whether training people with tinnitus to intentionally control specific aspects of their brain activity (which are linked to tinnitus) can reduce the distress they experience.
How it works
Researchers will use a brain-scanning technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to provide their volunteers with information about their brain activity, a process known as neurofeedback. Volunteers will practice controlling specific aspects of their brain activity linked to tinnitus, and the researchers will measure changes in how different parts of the brain interact with each other during this practice, focusing on parts of the brain associated with tinnitus.
By receiving feedback through a display screen in real time, volunteers can either try to change their strategy to a more effective one, or retain an existing good strategy for further training. As a result, volunteers will learn to gain intentional control of aspects of their brain activity, which will hopefully reduce the distress associated with their tinnitus.
How will this research benefit people with tinnitus?
The results from this project will tell us whether teaching people with tinnitus to intentionally control specific aspects of their brain activity can treat tinnitus.
In the long-term, it will also allow researchers to identify people with different ‘subtypes’ of tinnitus based on their neurofeedback response profiles, helping to develop personalised treatment plans for people with distressing tinnitus.
About the researcher
Professor Fatima Husain is a Professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science, and an Associate Dean in the College of Applied Health Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA. Her project is funded by RNID’s Discovery Research Grant and started in September 2025.
I began studying tinnitus and hearing loss for personal reasons – I have family members with both. I see the impact of these conditions in my family, and now in myself, and I want to help them – first by better understanding the mechanisms underlying these conditions and next, to develop new therapies.”
