For this webinar we were pleased to welcome Dr. Mehrnaz Shoushtarian of the Bionics Institute, Melbourne to talk about objective measurements of tinnitus. Chronic tinnitus, hearing sounds that are not present externally, affects around 1 in 8 individuals and can severely impact their quality of life. Rates of tinnitus increase with age and are expected to further rise in the future due to increasing noise exposure among young people.
Despite its wide prevalence, there is currently no objective way to determine the presence or severity of tinnitus or assess whether treatments are effective. Lack of an objective measure remains a significant hurdle to the development of treatments for this condition. They are working to develop an objective measure of tinnitus using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. This talk will present some of their work to date.
