You may be familiar with the experience of a ringing sensation in your ears after a night out enjoying some good music. Perhaps you’ve never given it a second thought as the sound normally disappears on its own. But what if you were to wake up in the morning and still have the ringing in your ears? And what if the ringing never stopped? This is tinnitus – better described as the phantom perception of sound. Tinnitus affects 10 to 15% of the adult population worldwide and there are currently no drug therapies available on the market. The reason for this is a limited understanding of how tinnitus sets in and what prevents it from going away. My work at the University of Leicester is focused on filling in the current knowledge gaps – and Dr Thomas Tagoe, one of my former PhD students, funded by Action on Hearing Loss, …