Is the posterior cingulate cortex an on-off switch for tinnitus?: A comparison between hearing loss subjects with and without tinnitus

•We compare resting-state EEGs of hearing loss subjects with- and without tinnitus.•When the auditory memory is linked to circuit breaker, tinnitus can be perceived.•Tinnitus may be regarded as a norm by an activation of the default mode network. As the human brain works in a Bayesian manner to minimize uncertainty toward external stimuli, the deafferented brain may generate tinnitus in an attempt to fill in missing auditory information, e.g. due to hearing loss. However, not everybody with hearing loss develops tinnitus. Understanding the differences between people with hearing loss who develop tinnitus versus those who do not offers a unique opportunity to unravel critical brain areas involved in the generation of a phantom sound. In this study, we compared resting-state quantitative electroencephalography between hearing loss patients with (HL-T) and without tinnitus (HL-NT) to identify cortical oscillatory signatures that may reveal prerequisites for the selective development of tinnitus in subjects with hearing loss. We enrolled 65 subjects with HL-NT and 65 subjects with HL-T whose tinnitus handicap inventory scores were