Frontal gamma-alpha ratio reveals neural oscillatory mechanism of attention shifting in tinnitus

In clinical practice, the symptoms of tinnitus patients can be temporarily alleviated by diverting their attention away from disturbing sounds. However, the precise mechanisms through which this alleviation occurs are still not well understood. Here, we aimed to directly evaluate the role of attention in tinnitus alleviation by conducting distraction tasks with multilevel loads and resting-state tests among 52 adults with tinnitus and 52 healthy controls. We demonstrated that the abnormal neural oscillations in tinnitus subjects, reflected in an altered gamma/alpha ratio index in the frontal lobe, could be regulated by attention shifting in a linear manner for which the regulatory effect increased with the load of distraction. Quantitative measures of the regulation significantly correlated with symptom severity. Altogether, our work provides proof-of-concept for the role of attention in tinnitus perception and lays a solid foundation to support evidence-based applications of attention shifting in clinical interventions for tinnitus.