Withdrawal — Brain or Ear?

[Cal18]

Maybe someone more well-versed can help me determine what kind of T I have.
Since my tinnitus was induced by antidepressant withdrawal/reaction, I think it would be considered brain.

1. I have some mid level hearing which may just be coincidental... however the test shows more loss in my right ear and that ear does have more T (unless the T covered my hearing so I appeared to have hearing loss but really don't?) I guess I need help with figuring out my frequency, not sure how all that works.
2. I thought most T was related to higher level hearing loss and mine is mid-range (or maybe I made that up)
3. I know ototoxic medications can cause hearing loss but I feel like my damage occurred months after drug use and during a time of stress
4. In the time leading up to this, I also had hyperacusis with ear pain right before the tinnitus got worse

 

[Alue]

Tinnitus is in the brain. Well it's cortical. Most likely synapses and nerve fibers are not transmitting information correctly. Even top ENT's and neurologists cannot tell you what kind of T you have as there may be many different types of tinnitus that have yet to be defined.
Do you perceive it in your head or in your ears?

 

[Cal18]

Thanks @Alue I have it in ears and my head. I have hissing in my head and ringing in my ears. I felt like it would be in my head too but the ear pain sort of threw things off for me. I'm scared of the brain scenario but I feel like it would be harder to treat and it doesn't seem there are any new treatments in the works for that.

 

[wags]

I thought most T was related to higher level hearing loss and mine is mid-range (or maybe I made that up)

Tinnitus can be associated with any frequency, it is just more commonly attributed to higher level frequencies because those are usually the ones to go first.

I know ototoxic medications can cause hearing loss but I feel like my damage occurred months after drug use and during a time of stress

Unless you have an audiogram of before your round of medications, you'll unfortunately never be able to know. The reality is our perception of our hearing loss is something we notice only when we start to look for it, and without the data we have nothing to validate our concerns,

There is a theory out there that tinnitus starts in the ears and can actually come to live in the brain due to neuroplastic development with the way the auditory cortex processes tinnitus' sounds. A lot of the literature around tinnitus separates the conditions into "acute" and "chronic", where the "acute" phase would be errant firing in the peripheral nervous system (ears) and the "chronic" phase would be when the tinnitus has settled itself inside of the auditory cortex (brain), so to speak.

Keep in mind this is all a theory, and relatively baseless at that, as the habituation/plasticity/development of tinnitus is still very poorly understood. Since the actual sound processing is in the brain, however, as Alue mentioned tinnitus is though of as a neurological condition.

 

[Steve Hubert]

Tinnitus is in the brain. Well it's cortical. Most likely synapses and nerve fibers are not transmitting information correctly. Even top ENT's and neurologists cannot tell you what kind of T you have as there may be many different types of tinnitus that have yet to be defined.
Do you perceive it in your head or in your ears?

This is correct. T may originate due to ear issues or other factors, but, it is essentially all brain.