The hypothetical relation between the degree of stress and auditory cortical evoked potentials in tinnitus sufferers

Tinnitus, known as" the ringing in the ears," is a heterogeneous auditory disorder. Many studies have shown that tinnitus perception and its correlations are not limited to the activity of a single brain area, but there are several networks involved in tinnitus generation, perception, and interpretation. One of the most important complications and comorbidity of tinnitus is tinnitus distress. Various studies have revealed that tinnitus distress is the product of multiple networks activity, namely the tinnitus distress network; some of them overlap with the perception and cognitive networks. Such an overlapping between the tinnitus perception network and the distress network brings to mind the role of stress on tinnitus perception. Moreover, tinnitus perception networks overlap the auditory perception network leading to the hypothesis that tinnitus distress might affect the functional status of the auditory cortex indexed by the auditory evoked potentials (AEPs), and consequently, the diversity in findings of studies concerning the AEPs in tinnitus sufferers could be interpreted by the amount of stress they have.