“…Despite this high prevalence and the tinnitus-associated distress of affected patients, which in severe cases may experience insomnia, psychological disorders like depression, the inability to work, or even commit suicide (Coles, 1984 ; Lewis et al, 1994 ; Langguth et al, 2011 ), there still is no effective cure for the condition, because all tinnitus research faces one central problem: Whereas the existence of a tinnitus percept can unequivocally be determined in human patients (one can simply ask them; cf. e.g., Pantev et al, 2012 ; Elgoyhen et al, 2015 ; Husain, 2016 ; Leaver et al, 2016 ), this is only unsatisfactorily possible in animal models for tinnitus (Von Der Behrens, 2014 ; Zhang et al, 2014 ; Galazyuk and Hebert, 2015 ; Brozoski and Bauer, 2016 ). On the other hand, the exact mechanisms within the auditory system that lead to the development of tinnitus are still unknown and hard to identify, since invasive neurophysiological methods that are essential for such research are only available in animal models but not in humans.…”