Martin Meyer and colleagues publish paper on tinnitus-related impairments in speech perception in JASA

People with chronic tinnitus often struggle to understand speech when there is background noise around. We aimed to find out if the brain processes individual speech sounds differently in these cases.

The study tested individuals with and without subjective chronic tinnitus by having them listen to and identify different speech sounds in quiet conditions and in noise. We found that for certain sounds, like an "s" sound, tinnitus individuals performed just as well and just as quickly as everyone else.
However, for faster sounds, like a "p" or a "t" presented in noise, a clear difference appeared. Although people with tinnitus got the answers right just as often as the control group, they took significantly longer to respond. Furthermore, while control participants without tinnitus naturally adjusted their speed depending on how careful they needed to be, the people with tinnitus did not show this balancing act.
In short, the findings show that while the ability to recognize the basic sound patterns is fine, the brain's timing and speed when handling fast sounds in noisy environments is impaired in people with tinnitus.

Han, J., Kleinjung, T., Meyer, M., & Neff, P. (2026). Tinnitus selectively disrupts phoneme level speech perception. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 160(3), 2514–2529. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0046671