Cognitive and Emotional Function and Brain Reorganisation Associated to Auditory Abilities : Impact of Tinnitus
the investigators have recently shown that patients with drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy who have undergone brain surgery targeting the medial temporal lobe structures were more likely to develop tinnitus postoperatively. This discovery of a vulnerability to tinnitus associated with medial temporal lobe surgery to eliminate drug-refractory epileptic seizures provides a new clinical model of tinnitus, targeting temporal lobe regions as generators or mediators of this hearing disorder. The objective of this project is to study the impact of tinnitus on the cognitive, emotional, psychoacoustic and cerebral functioning associated with this hearing disorder, and to clarify the pathophysiology of tinnitus by comparing different groups of individuals with tinnitus (surgical epileptic patients or non-surgical ORL patients) to matched tinnitus-free groups (surgical tinnitus-free cases and healthy controls volunteer).
⁃ Tinnitus+ Group - Suffering from subjective uni- or bilateral tinnitus, chronic (\>3 months) and stable (no period of remission).
⁃ Chir+ Group
⁃ \- Surgically treated for drug-resistant epilepsy of the temporal lobe (including the amygdala).
⁃ Group Tinnitus-
• Not suffering from tinnitus Group Chir-
• Non epileptic
• Not having undergone surgical treatment of the temporal lobe (including the tonsil)