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Acquired auditory processing disorders including age dependent hearing loss, speech discrimination deficits, tinnitus or hyperacusis, require a personalized diagnosis to assign the individual cause within the auditory hierarchy to either the periphery, subcortical, or distinct cortical or cortico-fugal neuronal dysfunctions. The good functioning of the feedforward and feedback PV-IN network is an essential precondition for audition that above all senses relies on high-speed information flow (Zajac IT and Nettelbeck T, 2018). Therefore, we hypothesize disease-specific deficits in temporal intracortical network function in auditory circuits. We studied fast auditory processing in tinnitus subjects with or without the comorbidity of hyperacusis using auditory stimuli evoking time-sensitive cortical responses. These responses were recorded using a time-sensitive OPM-MEG. We expect this method to become an efficient diagnostic strategy to fathom peripheral or central contribution of the distinct auditory impairments in the future to improve individualized targeted interventional therapies. Here we will present preliminary results demonstrating the usability and function of the OPM-MEG for hearing research in a clinical setting.

Acknowledgment and funding: This work was supported by ERA-NET NEURON JTC 2020: BMBF 01EW2102 CoSySpeech and the Tübingen Research Take off Program (TRT) of the Brasilien-Lateinamerika Zentrum, University of Tübingen.