Zhang, Lili ORCID: 0000-0002-2203-2949, Monacelli, Greta ORCID: 0000-0003-4677-4661, Vashisht, Himanshu ORCID: 0000-0002-2726-946X, Schlee, Winfried ORCID: 0000-0001-7942-1788, Langguth, Berthold ORCID: 0000-0002-7066-510X and Ward, Tomás E. ORCID: 0000-0002-6173-6607 (2022) The effects of tinnitus in probabilistic learning tasks: protocol for an ecological momentary assessment study. JMIR Research Protocols, 11 (11). ISSN 1929-0748
Abstract
Background: Chronic tinnitus is an increasing worldwide health concern, causing a significant burden to the health care system
each year. The COVID-19 pandemic has seen a further increase in reported cases. For people with tinnitus, symptoms are
exacerbated because of social isolation and the elevated levels of anxiety and depression caused by quarantines and lockdowns.
Although it has been reported that patients with tinnitus can experience changes in cognitive capabilities, changes in adaptive
learning via decision-making tasks for people with tinnitus have not yet been investigated.
Objective: In this study, we aim to assess state- and trait-related impairments in adaptive learning ability on probabilistic learning
tasks among people with tinnitus. Given that performance in such tasks can be quantified through computational modeling methods
using a small set of neural-informed model parameters, such approaches are promising in terms of the assessment of tinnitus
severity. We will first examine baseline differences in the characterization of decision-making under uncertainty between healthy
individuals and people with tinnitus in terms of differences in the parameters of computational models in a cross-sectional
experiment. We will also investigate whether these computational markers, which capture characteristics of decision-making,
can be used to understand the cognitive impact of tinnitus symptom fluctuations through a longitudinal experimental design.
Methods: We have developed a mobile app, AthenaCX, to deliver e-consent and baseline tinnitus and psychological assessments
as well as regular ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) of perceived tinnitus loudness and a web-based aversive version
of a probabilistic decision-making task, which can be triggered based on the participants’ responses to the EMA surveys.
Computational models will be developed to fit participants’ choice data in the task, and cognitive parameters will be estimated
to characterize participants’ current ability to adapt learning to the change of the simulated environment at each session when the
task is triggered. Linear regression analysis will be conducted to evaluate the impacts of baseline tinnitus severity on adapting
decision-making performance. Repeated measures linear regression analysis will be used to examine model-derived parameters
of decision-making in measuring real-time perceived tinnitus loudness fluctuations.
Results: Ethics approval was received in December 2020 from Dublin City University (DCUREC/2021/070). The implementation
of the experiments, including both the surveys and the web-based decision-making task, has been prepared. Recruitment flyers
have been shared with audiologists, and a video instruction has been created to illustrate to the participants how to participate in
the experiment. We expect to finish data collection over 12 months and complete data analysis 6 months after this. The results
are expected to be published in December 2023.
Conclusions: We believe that EMA with context-aware triggering can facilitate a deeper understanding of the effects of tinnitus
symptom severity upon decision-making processes as measured outside of the laboratory
Metadata
Item Type: | Article (Published) |
---|---|
Refereed: | Yes |
Uncontrolled Keywords: | chronic tinnitus; computational modeling; decision-making; ecological momentary assessment; mobile phone |
Subjects: | UNSPECIFIED |
DCU Faculties and Centres: | DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Engineering and Computing > School of Computing Research Institutes and Centres > INSIGHT Centre for Data Analytics |
Publisher: | JMIR Publications |
Official URL: | https://doi.org/10.2196/36583 |
Copyright Information: | © 2022 The Authors. |
Funders: | Allied Irish Banks, Science Foundation Ireland (SFI/12/RC/2289_P2) |
ID Code: | 28130 |
Deposited On: | 07 Mar 2023 16:02 by Thomas Murtagh . Last Modified 07 Mar 2023 16:02 |
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