ABSTRACT
Research into the causes of tinnitus poses unique problems. Paramount is the fact that tinnitus is a purely subjective phenomenon. Unlike bearing loss, which can be measured objectively, the only way to know that a patient hears noises is for the subject to report that fact. Naturally, experimental animals cannot make such a report even if researchers do something to them that is known to cause tinnitus. For example, large quantities of aspirin predictably produce a temporary tinnitus. In addition, exposure to extremely loud noise, sufficient to cause measurable temporary threshold shift generally produces temporary tinnitus. If an experimental animal could report the tinnitus, various techniques could be used to try to make it go away.
