Phantom Perception As a Bayesian Inference Problem: a Pilot Study.

Tinnitus is the continuous phantom perception of a ringing in the ears. Recently, it has been suggested that tinnitus may be a maladaptive inference of the brain to auditory anomalies, whether they are detected or undetected by an audiogram. The present study presents empirical evidence for this hypothesis by inducing an illusion in a sensory domain that is damaged (auditory) and one that is intact (visual). It also presents novel information about how people with tinnitus process multisensory stimuli in the audio-visual domain.