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Introduction
Additional affiliations
May 2020 - present
October 2017 - present
September 2014 - October 2017
Education
September 2008 - September 2014
Publications
Publications (84)
Former studies have established that individuals with a cochlear implant (CI) for treating single-sided deafness experience improved speech processing after implantation. However, it is not clear how each ear contributes separately to improve speech perception over time at the behavioral and neural level.
In this longitudinal EEG study with four di...
Tinnitus, characterized by the perception of sound without an external source, affects a significant portion of the population and can lead to considerable individual suffering, yet understanding of its suppression remains limited. Understanding neural traits of tinnitus suppression may be crucial for developing accurate predictive models in tinnit...
Public or patient involvement has only recently been established in tinnitus research. Citizen science (CS), community science, or participatory research are modes of scientific research which involve members of the general population with different levels of participation. CS covers a wide range of stakeholders, including patients, healthcare prof...
Neurofeedback (NFB) for tinnitus is currently under research in several independent labs. In recent times, NFB established itself as a clinical intervention option for a variety of chronic brain diseases, while its efficacy and exact mechanisms of action are still under scrutiny.
In this chapter, we present and review the current state of research...
Background:
Tinnitus is associated with a variety of etiologies, phenotypes, and underlying pathophysiological mechanisms, and available treatments have limited efficacy. A combination of treatments, addressing various aspects of tinnitus, might provide a viable and superior treatment strategy.
Methods:
In this multicenter, parallel-arm, randomized...
Former studies have established that individuals with a cochlear implant (CI) for treating single-sided deafness (SSD) experience improved speech processing after implantation. However, it is not clear how each ear contributes separately to improve speech perception over time at the behavioral and neural level. In this longitudinal EEG study with f...
This scientific commentary refers to ‘Does it matter what is trained? A randomized controlled trial evaluating the specificity of alpha/delta ratio neurofeedback in reducing tinnitus symptoms ‘by Jensen et al. (https://doi.org/10.1093/braincomms/fcad185).
Background
Tinnitus is a leading cause of disease burden globally. Several therapeutic strategies are recommended in guidelines for the reduction of tinnitus distress; however, little is known about the potentially increased effectiveness of a combination of treatments and personalized treatments for each tinnitus patient.
Methods
Within the Unifi...
Background:
The pathophysiology behind tinnitus is still not well understood. Different imaging methods help in the understanding of the complex relationships that lead to the perception of tinnitus.
Objective:
Herein, different functional imaging methods that can be used in the study of tinnitus are presented.
Materials and methods:
Consideri...
Background: Many individuals with chronic subjective tinnitus report significant problems in comprehending speech in adverse listening situations. A large body of studies has provided evidence to support the notion that deficits in speech-in-noise (SIN) are prevalent in the tinnitus population, while some studies have challenged these results. Nota...
Tinnitus is a condition associated with a continuous noise in the ears or head and can arise from many different medical disorders. The perception of tinnitus can vary within and between days. In the recent years, Ecological Momentary Assessments of tinnitus have been used to investigate these tinnitus variations during the daily life of the patien...
Background
Tinnitus is a leading cause of disease burden globally. Several therapeutic strategies are recommended in guidelines for the reduction of tinnitus distress; however, little is known about the potential increased effectiveness of a combination of treatments and personalized treatments for each tinnitus patient.
Methods
Within the Unifica...
High comorbidity rates, especially mental–physical comorbidity, constitute an increasing health care burden, with women and men being differentially affected. To gain an overview of comorbidity rates stratified by sex across a range of different conditions, this study examines comorbidity patterns within and between cardiovascular, pulmonary, skin,...
Background
Tinnitus is a heterogeneous condition which may be associated with moderate to severe disability, but the reasons why only a subset of individuals is burdened by the condition are not fully clear. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) allows a better understanding of tinnitus by capturing the fluctuations of tinnitus symptoms, such as di...
Background
Depression and anxiety are known to be associated with stress-induced changes in the immune system. Bothersome tinnitus can be related to stress and often co-occurs with depression and anxiety. This study investigates associations of psychological and audiological tinnitus-related factors with inflammatory parameters and immune cell subs...
Background
Tinnitus is the result of aberrant neuronal activity. As a novel treatment form, neuromodulation is used to modify neuronal activity of brain areas involved in tinnitus generation. Among the different forms of electric stimulation, transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) has been shown to be a promising treatment option for tinnitus...
Tinnitus is an auditory phantom perception in the ears or head in the absence of a corresponding external stimulus. There is currently no effective treatment available that reliably reduces tinnitus. Educational counseling is a treatment approach that aims to educate patients and inform them about possible coping strategies. For this feasibility st...
We performed magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) on healthy individuals with tinnitus and no hearing loss ( n = 16) vs. a matched control group ( n = 17) to further elucidate the role of excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters in tinnitus. Two-dimensional J-resolved spectroscopy (2D-JPRESS) was applied to disentangle Glutamate (Glu) from Glut...
Background
Tinnitus is a heterogeneous condition associated with moderate to severe disability, but the reasons why only a subset of individuals is burdened by the condition are not fully clear. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) allows a better understanding of tinnitus by allowing individualized models and by capturing the fluctuations of tinn...
Background
Currently, there are no objective markers to measure treatment efficacy in chronic (distressing) tinnitus. This study explores whether stress-related biomarkers cortisol and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) measured in hair samples of chronic tinnitus patients change after compact multimodal tinnitus-specific cognitive behavioral...
The role of stress and its neuroendocrine mediators in tinnitus is unclear. In this study, we measure cortisol as an indicator of hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis alterations and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) as a marker of adaptive neuroplasticity in hair of chronic tinnitus patients to investigate relationships with tinnitus-r...
Tinnitus is an auditory phantom perception in the ears or head in the absence of a corresponding external stimulus. There is currently no effective treatment available that reliably reduces tinnitus. Educative counseling is a treatment approach that aims to educate patients and inform them about possible coping strategies. For this feasability stud...
Background
Tinnitus represents a relatively common condition in the global population accompanied by various comorbidities and severe burden in many cases. Nevertheless, there is currently no general treatment or cure, presumable due to the heterogeneity of tinnitus with its wide variety of etiologies and tinnitus phenotypes. Hence, most treatment...
Tinnitus is attributed by the perception of a sound without any physical source causing the symptom. Symptom profiles of tinnitus patients are characterized by a large heterogeneity, which is a major obstacle in developing general treatments for this chronic disorder. As tinnitus patients often report severe constraints in their daily life, the lac...
Background: Tinnitus is the result of aberrant neuronal activity. As a novel treatment form, neuromodulation is used to modify neuronal activity of brain areas involved in tinnitus generation. Among the different forms of electric stimulation, transcranial Random Noise Stimulation (tRNS) has been shown to be a promising treatment option for tinnitu...
More research, including a randomized controlled trial, is needed to further investigate the the combined treatment and gain better understanding of the treatment mechanisms.
Background: Tinnitus is the result of aberrant neuronal activity. As a novel treatment form, neuromodulation is used to modify neuronal activity of brain areas involved in tinnitus generation. Among the different forms of electric stimulation, transcranial Random Noise Stimulation (tRNS) has been shown to be a promising treatment option for tinnitu...
Background
Tinnitus represents a relatively common condition in the global population accompanied by various comorbidities and severe burden in many cases. Nevertheless, there is currently no general treatment or cure, presumable due to the heterogeneity of tinnitus with its wide variety of etiologies and tinnitus phenotypes. Hence, most treatment...
Objective
To investigate oscillatory brain activity changes following acoustic stimulation in tinnitus and whether these changes are associated with behavioral measures of tinnitus loudness. Moreover, differences in ongoing brain activity between individuals with and without residual inhibition (RI) are examined (responders vs. non-responders).
Me...
Background: Tinnitus suppression following acoustic stimulation is a well-known phenomenon also termed residual inhibition (RI). Some individuals may experience prolonged RI (PRI), which can last for several hours or even days, after a single short-term acoustic stimulation. Exact mechanisms of this phenomenon are unknown and current evidence anecd...
In this study we analyzed psychometric data of 107 individuals who suffer from chronic subjective tinnitus. In particular, we elucidated the relationship between tinnitus-related distress, psychological comorbidities, age, and hearing, and the performance in cognitive concentration and interference tests. Previous research has provided first eviden...
Little is known about the trajectory of tinnitus over time. This study addressed (1) how often tinnitus remitted in patients with chronic tinnitus; (2) how subjective reported tinnitus characteristics, such as loudness, laterality, and type and measures of burden, such as tinnitus distress, depression, and quality of life, changes over time; (3) ho...
Tinnitus is the perception of a phantom sound and the patient's reaction to it. Although much progress has been made, tinnitus remains a scientific and clinical enigma of high prevalence and high economic burden, with an estimated prevalence of 10%–20% among the adult population.
The EU is funding a new collaborative project entitled “Unification o...
As for hypertension, chronic pain, epilepsy and other disorders with particular symptoms, a commonly accepted and unambiguous definition provides a common ground for researchers and clinicians to study and treat the problem. The WHO's ICD11 definition only mentions tinnitus as a nonspecific symptom of a hearing disorder, but not as a clinical entit...
Tinnitus is the chronic perception of a phantom sound with different levels of related distress. Past research has elucidated interactions of tinnitus distress with audiological, affective and further clinical variables. The influence of tinnitus distress on cognition is underinvestigated. Our study aims at investigating specific influences of tinn...
Background: Acoustic stimulation was shown to be effective in short-term suppression of tinnitus. However, tinnitus cannot be suppressed in all patients. Recent insights from mental health research suggests that personality traits may be important factors in prediction of treatment outcomes or improvement of tinnitus over time. No previous acoustic...
As for hypertension, chronic pain, epilepsy and other disorders with particular symptoms, a commonly accepted and unambiguous definition provides a common ground for researchers and clinicians to study and treat the problem. The WHO's ICD11 definition only mentions tinnitus as a nonspecific symptom of a hearing disorder, but not as a clinical entit...
BACKGROUND: Tinnitus suppression following acoustic stimulation is a well-known phenomenon also termed residual inhibition (RI). Some individuals may experience prolonged RI (PRI), which can last for several hours or even days, after a single short-term acoustic stimulation. Exact mechanisms of this phenomenon are unknown and current evidence anecd...
In this study we analyzed psychometric data of 107 individuals who suffer from chronic subjective tinnitus. In particular, we elucidated the relationship between tinnitus-related distress, psychological comorbidities, age, and hearing, and the performance in cognitive concentration and interference tests. Previous research has provided first eviden...
Gender constitutes a major factor to consider when tailoring subtype-based therapies for tinnitus. Previous reports showed important differences between men and women concerning basic perceptual tinnitus characteristics (i.e., laterality, frequency, tinnitus loudness) as well as psychological reactions linked to this condition. Therapeutic approach...
The recording of Ecological Momentary Assessments (EMA) can assist people with chronic diseases in monitoring their health state. However, many users quickly lose interest in their respective EMA platforms. Therefore, we studied the adherence of users of the mHealth app TrackYourTinnitus (TYT). The app is used to record EMA in people with tinnitus....
Magneto- and electroencephalography (M/EEG) investigations in tinnitus patients demonstrated anomalous oscillatory brain activity patterns compared to healthy controls. A well-established phenomenon in tinnitus is the possibility to temporary suppress tinnitus following acoustic stimulation, which is termed residual inhibition (RI). The few former...
Background
Acoustic stimulation was shown to be effective in short-term suppression of tinnitus. However, tinnitus cannot be suppressed in all patients. Recent insights from mental health research suggests that personality traits may be important factors in prediction of treatment outcomes or improvement of tinnitus over time. No previous acoustic...
Tinnitus, the perception of sound in the absence of a corresponding sound, and the distress caused by it, is rarely a static phenomenon. It rather fluctuates over time depending on endogenous and exogenous factors. The COVID-19 pandemic is a potential environmental stressor that might influence the individually perceived tinnitus distress. Since no...
Background:
Alpha/delta neurofeedback has been shown to be a potential treatment option for chronic subjective tinnitus. Traditional neurofeedback approaches working with a handful of surface electrodes have been criticized, however, due to their low spatial specificity.
Objective:
The purpose of this study was to evaluate an innovative tomograp...
Background
Modern smartphones contain sophisticated high-end hardware features, offering high computational capabilities at extremely manageable costs and have undoubtedly become an integral part in users' daily life. Additionally, smartphones offer a well-established ecosystem that is easily discoverable and accessible via the marketplaces of diff...
BACKGROUND
Modern smartphones contain sophisticated high-end hardware features, offering high computational capabilities at extremely manageable costs and have undoubtedly become an integral part in users' daily life. Additionally, smartphones offer a well-established ecosystem that is easily discoverable and accessible via the marketplaces of diff...
Objectives: Daily life behaviour can be studied by smart mobile devices. The current study investigated associations between personality traits and smartphone usage in daily routine. Methods: 526 participants used the Track Your Daily Routine smartphone app (TYDR) for 48 days, on average (SD = 63.2, range 2 to 304). The Big Five Inventory 2 (BFI-2)...
Context-aware applications stemming from diverse fields like mobile health, recommender systems, and mobile commerce potentially benefit from knowing aspects of the user’s personality. As filling out personality questionnaires is tedious, we propose the prediction of the user’s personality from smartphone sensor and usage data. In order to collect...
Smartphones containing sophisticated high-end hardware and offering high computational capabilities at extremely manageable costs have become mainstream and an integral part of users’ lives. Widespread adoption of smartphone devices has encouraged the development of many smartphone applications, resulting in a well-established ecosystem, which is e...
Background: The phenomenon of short-term tinnitus suppression by different forms of acoustic stimulation is referred to as residual inhibition (RI). RI can be triggered in the majority of tinnitus cases and was found to be depending on the used intensity, length or types of sounds. Past research already stressed the impact of noise stimulation as w...
The pitch of tinnitus sound is a key characteristic that is of importance to research and sound therapies relying on exact tinnitus pitch matches. The identification of this tinnitus pitch is a challenging task as there is no objective measurement available. During the tinnitus pitch-matching procedure, the participant identifies an external sound...
Previous studies have shown that personality traits are related to tinnitus distress as measured by the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI) and the Tinnitus Questionnaire (TQ). However, little is known about the role of personality on tinnitus distress over time. We collected the THI and the TQ of 388 patients who visited a tertiary tinnitus clinic b...
Many symptoms of neuropsychiatric disorders, such as tinnitus, are subjective and vary over time. Usually, in interviews or self-report questionnaires, patients are asked to retrospectively report symptoms as well as their severity, duration and influencing factors. However, only little is known to what degree such retrospective reports reflect the...
Tinnitus is a condition associated with a continuous noise in the ears or head and can arise from many different medical disorders. The perception of tinnitus can vary within and between days. In the recent years, Ecological Momentary Assessments of tinnitus have been used to investigate these tinnitus variations during the daily life of the patien...
Over the past few years extensive body of research was produced investigating the effects of repetitive
transcranial magnetic stimulation (rtMS) for the treatment of chronic tinnitus with heterogeneous
results. This heterogeneity is exemplified by two recently published large-scale clinical trials
reporting different outcomes. Technical aspects of...
mHealth technologies are increasingly utilized in various medical contexts. Mobile crowdsensing is such a technology , which is often used for data collection scenarios related to questions on chronic disorders. One prominent reason for the latter setting is based on the fact that powerful Ecological Momentary Assessments (EMA) can be performed. No...
Previous studies investigating the relation between personality and tinnitus distress showed that high neuroticism and low extraversion scores are related to higher tinnitus distress measured by the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI) and the Tinnitus Questionnaire (TQ). However, little is known about the role of personality on tinnitus distress over...
Introduction: Chronic tinnitus is a condition estimated to affect 10–15% of the population. No treatment has shown efficacy in randomized clinical trials to reliably and effectively suppress the phantom perceptions, and little is known why patients react differently to the same treatments. Tinnitus heterogeneity may play a central role in treatment...
First attempts have demonstrated that the application of alpha/delta neurofeedback in the treatment of chronic tinnitus leads to a reduction of symptoms at the group level. However, recent research also suggests that chronic tinnitus is a decidedly heterogeneous phenomenon, one that requires treatment of distinct subgroups or even on an individual...
Recent studies have compared tinnitus suppression, or residual inhibition, between amplitude- and frequency-modulated (AM) sounds and noises or pure tones (PT). Results are indicative, yet inconclusive, of stronger tinnitus suppression of modulated sounds especially near the tinnitus frequency. Systematic comparison of AM sounds at the tinnitus fre...
Chronic subjective tinnitus is an audible sound that lacks an external source. A notable number of neuroscientific studies have been conducted applying magnetoencephalography and electroencephalography (MEEG) in resting state paradigms to elucidate neural correlates of tinnitus. In these studies, recordings were usually performed without particular...
Context-aware applications stemming from diverse fields like mobile health, recommender systems, and mobile commerce potentially benefit from knowing aspects of the user’s personality. As filling out personality questionnaires is tedious, we propose the prediction of the user’s personality from smartphone sensor and usage data. In order to collect...
Context-aware applications stemming from diverse fields like mobile health, recommender systems, and mobile commerce potentially benefit from knowing aspects of the user's personality. As filling out personality questionnaires is tedious, we propose the prediction of the user's personality from smartphone sensor and usage data. In order to collect...
Individuals suffering from tinnitus often complain about difficulties understanding speech in noisy environments even in the absence of a peripheral hearing loss. This EEG study aimed to investigate whether aspects of phonetic perception are affected by the experience of tinnitus. We examined a sample of individuals with chronic, subjective tinnitu...
More specifically, we visualize tinnitus records as a hologram, which is augmented by the real world. The developed prototype particularly tackles three challenges in the context of analyzing the TrackYourTinnitus data set visually. First, the detection of correlations between dimensions is simplified by highlighting the relations between the diagr...