Glossary
The words that come up, explained
Tinnitus comes with a vocabulary you did not ask for — half of it from audiology, half from research papers, and much of it used loosely. These are the 64 terms you are most likely to meet in an appointment or a study abstract.
Each definition is written to answer the question on its own. Where we have an article that goes properly into a term, it links on — but you should not have to click anything to get a real answer. Deliberately one page rather than a hundred one-line pages: these are looked up mid-sentence, and one searchable list does that better.
64 terms
The sound
- Objective tinnitus
- The rare form that another person can sometimes hear, usually with a stethoscope. It points to an actual physical sound source such as blood flow or muscle contraction. Read more →
- Pulsatile tinnitus · also called whooshing, heartbeat tinnitus
- Tinnitus that pulses in time with your heartbeat. It is investigated differently from ordinary tinnitus because it can have identifiable vascular causes. Read more →
- Somatic tinnitus · also called somatosensory tinnitus
- Tinnitus that changes when you move your jaw, neck or head, or press on certain muscles. The modulation itself is the diagnostic clue, and it opens treatment options that do not apply otherwise. Read more →
- Subjective tinnitus
- Tinnitus only you can hear. This is the overwhelming majority of cases, and it is why no scan or blood test detects tinnitus directly. Read more →
- Tinnitus
- The perception of sound with no external source producing it — ringing, buzzing, hissing, clicking or roaring. It is a symptom rather than a disease, and it has many possible underlying causes. Read more →
- Unilateral tinnitus
- Tinnitus in one ear only. Assessed more actively than tinnitus in both ears, because one-sided symptoms are more often structural. Read more →
Anatomy & mechanism
- Auditory cortex
- The part of the brain that processes sound. Much current thinking holds that tinnitus arises from changes in how this region behaves after reduced input, rather than from a sound in the ear. Read more →
- Cochlea
- The spiral, fluid-filled structure in the inner ear that converts sound vibration into nerve signals. Most hearing loss associated with tinnitus involves damage here. Read more →
- Dehiscence
- A gap or absence in a bony wall. In the ear it describes bone that should be covering something and is not — over a semicircular canal, or over the sigmoid sinus. Read more →
- Endolymph
- The other inner-ear fluid, held inside the membranous labyrinth and separated from perilymph by a membrane. Distension of the endolymphatic space is called hydrops. Read more →
- Endolymphatic hydrops · also called cochlear hydrops, hydrops
- Distension of the fluid-filled endolymphatic space in the inner ear. It is a finding rather than a diagnosis, and it is not a synonym for Ménière's disease — Ménière's is a syndrome defined by symptoms, and hydrops can underlie presentations without the vertigo attacks. Read more →
- Eustachian tube
- The passage connecting the middle ear to the back of the throat, which equalises pressure. When it does not open properly it can cause fullness, muffled hearing and tinnitus. Read more →
- Hair cells
- The sensory cells inside the cochlea that respond to sound. In humans they do not regenerate, which is why noise damage is permanent. Read more →
- Ototoxicity
- Damage to hearing or balance caused by a substance, usually a medication. Some ototoxic effects reverse when the drug stops; others do not. Read more →
- Perilymph
- One of the two fluids filling the inner ear, occupying the space around the membranous labyrinth. Finding it where it does not belong — in the air-filled middle ear — is what defines a perilymph fistula. Read more →
- Sigmoid sinus
- A large vein carrying blood out of the skull, curving through the temporal bone directly behind the inner ear with only a thin plate of bone between them. When that plate is missing or the vein wall bulges, the turbulence becomes audible. Read more →
- Third window
- An abnormal opening into the inner ear, which is built with two. It lets sound and pressure behave in ways the system does not expect, producing sound- or pressure-triggered dizziness and unusually loud perception of internal body sounds. Read more →
Assessment
- Air–bone gap
- A difference between air conduction thresholds (through headphones) and bone conduction thresholds (through a vibrator on the skull). It means sound is being blocked before it reaches a working inner ear, which points at a mechanical and often treatable cause. Read more →
- Audiogram
- The chart produced by a hearing test, plotting the quietest sound you can hear at each frequency. It measures hearing, not tinnitus — no audiogram shows your tinnitus. Read more →
- Audiometric notch
- A dip in hearing at one frequency band with better hearing either side of it, classically around 4000 Hz after noise exposure. There is no standardised definition of one — expert reviewers agreed on whether a notch was present in only about 71% of cases in one study. Read more →
- Auditory brainstem response · also called ABR
- A test recording the electrical response as sound travels up the auditory nerve and brainstem, rather than the quietest tone you can detect. It can stay abnormal after hearing thresholds have recovered, which is why it is used to detect demyelination an audiogram misses. Read more →
- Bone conduction
- Sound delivered by vibrating the skull directly, using a small oscillator behind or in front of the ear, so it reaches the inner ear without passing through the ear canal or middle ear. Comparing it against air conduction is what reveals an air–bone gap. Read more →
- dB HL · also called decibels hearing level
- The unit on an audiogram's vertical axis. It is not absolute loudness: 0 dB HL is the quietest level a young healthy reference ear detects at that frequency, so your threshold is the distance from that reference. Negative values are possible and simply mean better than average. Read more →
- Otoacoustic emissions · also called OAE, OAEs
- Faint sounds the healthy inner ear produces on its own, recorded with a probe in the ear canal. They come from the outer hair cells, so their presence or absence says something about those cells specifically rather than about the whole hearing pathway — which is why the test appears on reports alongside an audiogram rather than instead of one. Read more →
- Papilledema
- Swelling where the optic nerve enters the eye, seen by a clinician looking into it. It is the finding that establishes raised intracranial pressure, and it cannot be assessed without the right instrument. Read more →
- Pitch matching
- Comparing your tinnitus against generated tones to describe its frequency. It depends on your own judgement on the day and is not an objective measurement. Read more →
- Pure tone average · also called PTA
- The mean of your thresholds at 500, 1000 and 2000 Hz — the single number most hearing reports lead with. It averages away the shape of the curve, so a normal average can sit alongside a clearly abnormal audiogram. Read more →
- Pure-tone audiometry
- The standard hearing test: tones at different pitches and volumes, with you indicating when you hear them. It covers a defined frequency range, so damage above that range can be missed. Read more →
- Speech audiometry
- A test of how well you understand speech, often against background noise. People can have near-normal tone thresholds and still struggle to follow conversation in a noisy room. Read more →
- Tympanometry
- A measurement of how the eardrum moves under changing pressure. It assesses the middle ear rather than hearing itself. Read more →
Treatment
- ACT · also called acceptance and commitment therapy
- A therapy focused on accepting the presence of tinnitus rather than fighting it. In one head-to-head trial it outperformed TRT on distress. Read more →
- Bimodal neuromodulation
- Pairing sound with stimulation of another sense, usually the tongue, to drive targeted changes in auditory processing. The approach behind FDA-approved devices such as Lenire. Read more →
- CBT · also called cognitive behavioural therapy
- A structured psychological therapy targeting the reaction to tinnitus rather than the sound. It has the most consistent evidence base of any tinnitus-distress treatment. Read more →
- Embolisation · also called embolization, transarterial embolisation
- Threading a catheter to an abnormal blood vessel and blocking it off from inside. For a dural arteriovenous fistula causing pulsatile tinnitus, one series reported the sound disappearing completely in 21 of 26 treated patients. Read more →
- Habituation
- The process by which the brain stops flagging a constant sound as significant, so it fades from awareness without getting quieter. This is what most tinnitus management aims for. Read more →
- Masking
- Using external sound to cover tinnitus. Distinct from sound therapy, which deliberately uses a lower level to blend with the tinnitus rather than drown it out. Read more →
- Notched sound therapy
- Sound with a narrow band removed around your tinnitus frequency, on the theory that reduced stimulation there may lower related neural activity. Trial results have been mixed. Read more →
- Progressive Tinnitus Management · also called PTM
- A stepped programme developed for the US Department of Veterans Affairs combining structured sound therapy taught by an audiologist with CBT-derived coping skills taught by a psychologist. Its telephone version beat a wait-list on every outcome measured. Read more →
- Sound therapy
- Background sound used to reduce the contrast between tinnitus and silence. Its strongest evidence is for coping and sleep rather than for changing the tinnitus itself. Read more →
- Stereotactic radiosurgery · also called SRS
- Focused radiation delivered without an incision, used for tumours near structures that surgery risks. For glomus jugulare tumours a meta-analysis reported 95% tumour control and 54% tinnitus improvement — two different numbers that are frequently conflated. Read more →
- Tinnitus distress
- How much tinnitus interferes with sleep, mood, concentration and daily life. It correlates only loosely with loudness, and it is what most treatment actually targets. Read more →
- TRT · also called tinnitus retraining therapy
- Counselling combined with low-level sound, aimed at habituation over months. Widely used, with uneven trial quality and protocols that vary between clinics. Read more →
Related conditions
- Acoustic neuroma · also called vestibular schwannoma
- A benign tumour on the nerve between the inner ear and the brain. Uncommon, but one of the reasons persistent one-sided tinnitus with asymmetric hearing loss is investigated. Read more →
- Cholesteatoma
- A growth of skin in the middle ear or mastoid, where skin does not belong. Not cancer, but destructive: it expands and erodes the bone it presses against. The pattern that raises it is hearing loss with a chronically draining ear that ear drops do not fix. Read more →
- Decreased sound tolerance · also called DST, sound sensitivity
- An umbrella phrase covering at least three distinct conditions — hyperacusis, misophonia and phonophobia. A 2021 review argues explicitly against treating it as one construct, because the three respond to different things. Read more →
- Dural arteriovenous fistula · also called dAVF, DAVF
- An abnormal direct connection between an artery and a vein inside the membrane lining the skull, delivering arterial-pressure blood into a vein not built for it. Whether it is dangerous depends on cortical venous drainage, not on how loud the sound is. Read more →
- Fibromuscular dysplasia · also called FMD
- An uncommon disease of medium-sized arteries that is neither inflammatory nor atherosclerotic, most often affecting women in young and middle adulthood. Headaches and pulsatile tinnitus are among its common symptoms, and the cerebrovascular findings associated with it are cervical artery dissection and intracranial aneurysms. Read more →
- Glomus tumour · also called glomus tumor, paraganglioma, glomus jugulare, glomus tympanicum
- A paraganglioma of the temporal bone — indolent, classically benign and highly vascular. Its two commonest symptoms are hearing loss and pulsatile tinnitus, and radiotherapy or active surveillance are now recommended alongside surgery for selected patients. Read more →
- Hyperacusis
- Reduced tolerance to ordinary sound, where everyday noise is experienced as uncomfortably or painfully loud. It frequently occurs alongside tinnitus. Read more →
- Idiopathic intracranial hypertension · also called IIH, intracranial hypertension
- Raised pressure in the fluid around the brain with no identifiable cause. Its three primary symptoms are headache, vision loss and pulsatile tinnitus, and the reason it is not left alone is that untreated it damages the optic nerves. Read more →
- Ménière's disease
- An inner ear disorder involving episodes of vertigo, fluctuating hearing loss, ear fullness and tinnitus. The pattern of episodes distinguishes it from tinnitus alone. Read more →
- Misophonia
- An acquired aversive reaction to specific sounds, very often human ones — chewing, breathing, pen-clicking. The problem is which sound it is rather than how loud, which is what separates it from hyperacusis. Read more →
- Otosclerosis
- Abnormal bone growth around the stapes in the middle ear, restricting its movement and causing conductive hearing loss. One of the few tinnitus causes where surgery has evidence of resolving the tinnitus itself. Read more →
- Patulous eustachian tube
- A eustachian tube that stays abnormally open rather than failing to open. Produces autophony — your own voice and breathing booming inside your head — and the usual treatments for the opposite problem make it worse. Read more →
- Perilymph fistula · also called PLF, perilymphatic fistula
- An abnormal communication between the fluid-filled inner ear and the air-filled middle ear, mastoid or cranial space. Surgically correctable by sealing it, and the subject of a diagnostic controversy running more than fifty years. Read more →
- Phonophobia
- A specific phobia of sound, where the distress attaches to the anticipation of a sound as much as to the sound itself. The third of the three conditions that get collapsed into the phrase decreased sound tolerance, and the one most often folded into anxiety instead. Read more →
- Presbycusis · also called age-related hearing loss
- Age-related hearing loss, described in the review literature as the third leading cause of chronic disability in older adults. Usually gradual and symmetric, which is why the tinnitus accompanying it is typically in both ears and hard to date. Read more →
- Sensorineural hearing loss
- Hearing loss from damage to the inner ear or auditory nerve, as opposed to a mechanical problem in the outer or middle ear. The type most often associated with tinnitus. Read more →
- Sudden sensorineural hearing loss · also called SSHL, sudden deafness
- A rapid drop in hearing over hours to a few days, usually in one ear. Treated as a medical urgency: evidence indicates outcomes are better when treatment starts early. Read more →
- Superior canal dehiscence · also called SCDS, superior semicircular canal dehiscence
- A gap in the bone overlying a semicircular canal, creating a third window into the inner ear. Produces sound- or pressure-triggered vertigo and hearing one's own internal body sounds unusually loudly. Read more →
- Temporary threshold shift
- The short-term dulling of hearing and ringing after loud noise exposure, which usually resolves within a day or two. Repeated episodes are associated with permanent damage. Read more →
- TMJ disorder · also called temporomandibular joint disorder
- Problems affecting the jaw joint, which sits directly beside the ear. Associated with tinnitus that often changes with jaw movement. Read more →
- Vestibular migraine
- Migraine presenting with vertigo, and the diagnosis most often confused with Ménière's disease. Can involve tinnitus and aural fullness without the progressive hearing loss that defines Ménière's. Read more →
A note on the vocabulary itself
Two terms are worth separating, because conflating them causes real confusion. Loudness is how loud the tinnitus seems; distress is how much it interferes with your life. They correlate only loosely, and almost all treatment evidence targets the second. A trial that improved distress did not necessarily make anyone’s tinnitus quieter, and it is usually reported as though it did.
Similarly, masking and sound therapy are used interchangeably in marketing but mean different things: masking covers the sound, sound therapy deliberately sits below it. Which one a product is actually doing tells you what it can reasonably be expected to achieve.
Where to go next
- How tinnitus is diagnosed — where most of the assessment vocabulary above gets used
- Treatments compared — the therapy acronyms, rated by evidence
- Research database — the studies these terms come from