Exploration of Cortical Neural Network in Patients With Bothersome Tinnitus

Task-Based Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) The task-based fMRI protocol is based on work performed at Washington University by Dr. Gordon Shulman and published in The Journal of Neuroscience.(Shulman, Astafiev, Franke, Pope, Snyder, McAvoy, and Corbetta 2009) Individuals will be shown a target, which is randomly selected from 12 objects designated as targets, before each scan. The target for a scan will never appear as a non-target object in another scan. Per established protocol, individuals will fixate on a central cross prior to imaging. Individuals will press a MR-compatible button when they detect the target. Target objects only appear in the cued stream. Cues, a filled red square, are programmed to occur, on average, every 2.06, 4.12, or 6.18 seconds within a temporal window of ± 400 milliseconds centered on those values.