Tinnitus is a subjective perception of a sound, such as ringing or buzzing, without the presence of an external or internal source with a duration of at least three months. It is a very distressing and, frequently, very chronic condition which affects approximately 10–15% of people living in industrial countries.
From a neurophysiological perspective, subjective tinnitus is therefore associated with altered neural activity along the auditory pathway and hyperactivity in auditory brain areas as well as non-auditory brain areas. These given pathological neural circumstances represent a significant leverage point for the application of TMS (Theodoroff et al., 2013).
TMS may help to reduce this hyperactivity and in turn reduce the tinnitus perception level and/or make it less intense.
