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Lookup NU author(s): Dr William Sedley, Professor Tim GriffithsORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2024 The Authors. Human Brain Mapping published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.The hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus have been implicated as part of a tinnitus network by a number of studies. These structures are usually considered in the context of a “limbic system,” a concept typically invoked to explain the emotional response to tinnitus. Despite this common framing, it is not apparent from current literature that this is necessarily the main functional role of these structures in persistent tinnitus. Here, we highlight a different role that encompasses their most commonly implicated functional position within the brain—that is, as a memory system. We consider tinnitus as an auditory object that is held in memory, which may be made persistent by associated activity from the hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus. Evidence from animal and human studies implicating these structures in tinnitus is reviewed and used as an anchor for this hypothesis. We highlight the potential for the hippocampus/parahippocampal gyrus to facilitate maintenance of the memory of the tinnitus percept via communication with auditory cortex, rather than (or in addition to) mediating emotional responses to this percept.
Author(s): Berger JI, Billig AJ, Sedley W, Kumar S, Griffiths TD, Gander PE
Publication type: Review
Publication status: Published
Journal: Human Brain Mapping
Year: 2024
Volume: 45
Issue: 3
Online publication date: 20/02/2024
Acceptance date: 04/02/2024
ISSN (print): 1065-9471
ISSN (electronic): 1097-0193
Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Inc
URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.26627
DOI: 10.1002/hbm.26627
PubMed id: 38376166
Data Access Statement: Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
