Phantom percepts: tinnitus and pain as persisting aversive memory networks.

Summary

Proposes that both tinnitus and chronic pain are, at a network level, forms of aversive memory that fail to extinguish: sensory deafferentation triggers a memory-like network (involving parahippocampal and related limbic areas) that keeps 're-presenting' the missing input as a persistent, distressing percept, rather than the brain successfully learning that the input is simply gone.

Key findings

• Frames tinnitus (and chronic pain) as a failure to extinguish an aversive memory trace for missing/damaged sensory input.
• Implicates parahippocampal and limbic memory circuitry alongside the sensory pathway itself.
• Provides a conceptual bridge between purely sensory (auditory) accounts and the emotional distress that so often accompanies tinnitus.