For people living with tinnitus, the questions are personal: Why does this happen? Why isn’t there a cure? Why does it affect some people so much more than others? These are also among the hardest questions in auditory neuroscience, and answering them requires sustained, rigorous scientific investment.

This year, ATA made its largest single research investment in its 55-year history, awarding more than $655,000 across five grants to scientists working on tinnitus, from early-career investigators to established researchers, and spanning work from the laboratory to the clinic. What makes this grant cycle notable isn’t just the size of the investment, it’s the range. These five projects collectively explore the underlying causes of tinnitus in the brain, develop new ways to measure tinnitus, test novel approaches to reduce its impact, and investigate why certain individuals, including Veterans living with PTSD, often experience more severe symptoms.

Two of this year’s awards focus on the auditory cortex-the part of the brain that processes sound-and what happens to it after hearing loss.

At Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and Harvard Medical School, Kameron Clayton, PhD, is investigating a specific type of brain cell that appears to stop working correctly after cochlear damage, leaving the auditory cortex in a state of overactivity that researchers believe drives the perception of tinnitus. In earlier work on hyperacusis, Dr. Clayton found that reactivating these cells can normalize sound perception for up to a week, even when the underlying hearing loss remains. This two-year foundational grant takes that discovery a step further, applying the same approach to tinnitus for the first time, testing whether targeted reactivation of these cells can reduce tinnitus perception and, critically, how long that relief might last.

Harvard doctoral candidate Anna Guo is investigating whether the brain’s capacity to rewire itself, known as plasticity, can be harnessed to produce lasting suppression of that overactivity rather than temporary relief. Her fellowship research could help explain why some interventions work for a while and then stop, and possibly point toward approaches that could sustain suppression of tinnitus.

At Université Laval in Québec, Philippe Fournier, PhD, is examining the role of the trigeminal nerve in tinnitus modulation. His research uses noninvasive vibrotactile stimulation applied to the face, jaw, or neck to test whether engaging this somatosensory pathway can reduce tinnitus, and under what conditions it works best. The study focuses on people with somatosensory tinnitus, a subtype in which symptoms respond to physical movement or touch, and will compare outcomes when vibrotactile stimulation is used alone versus in combination with sound. Findings could inform more personalized treatment for patients.

One of the most significant barriers to tinnitus diagnosis and treatment is the absence of objective clinical measures. Tinnitus is currently assessed through patient self-report, limiting researchers’ ability to compare findings across studies and clinicians’ ability to reliably characterize what a patient is experiencing. At Newcastle University in the UK, William Sedley, PhD, is working to address this gap. His project seeks to refine and validate MICTAP, a single-session EEG-based assessment that can objectively characterize tinnitus type, severity, and its relationship to distress and sound sensitivity. A key aim is to establish test-retest reliability, confirming that the tool produces consistent results across time and varying conditions. A successful outcome would give the broader research and clinical community a standardized, ready-to-use assessment tool with real implications for how tinnitus is diagnosed, studied, and ultimately treated.

Tinnitus and PTSD co-occur at high rates among Veterans and military-connected adults, particularly following noise trauma or blast exposure. When both conditions are present, tinnitus tends to be more severe, more distressing, and more resistant to treatment. Yet the neural mechanisms underlying this relationship remain poorly understood. At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, doctoral candidate Emilia Kaniewska is using MRI to examine structural brain differences across three groups: adults with tinnitus alone, tinnitus with hearing loss, and tinnitus with co-occurring PTSD. By mapping brain differences associated with tinnitus and PTSD together, her research aims to clarify why the two conditions in combination are so burdensome and what treatments might address both.

The five investigators will present their findings at the 2027 Tinnitus Research Initiative World Conference, taking place September 15-18 in Washington, DC, and hosted by ATA for the first time on American soil in more than a decade.

Learn how ATA invests in groundbreaking tinnitus research.