Tinnitus as a Stable Endogenous Attractor in a Predictive Auditory System

Auditory perception emerges from a dynamic balance between ascending sensory signals and descending predictive processes. Under normal conditions, external input constrains internal neural dynamics, preventing the autonomous stabilization of internally generated activity. In tinnitus, this balance is disrupted. Partial or frequency-specific degradation of auditory input reduces sensory precision, weakening bottom-up constraint and allowing top-down predictive dynamics to dominate. In this work, we propose a formal framework in which tinnitus corresponds to a stable endogenous attractor arising within a predictive auditory system operating in an under-constrained informational regime. Using a minimal dynamical formulation of perceptual inference, extended to an explicit frequency domain, we show that the emergence of such attractors is a necessary consequence of reduced sensory constraint rather than aberrant signal generation. This perspective explains the persistence of tinnitus, its resistance to peripheral interventions, and its modulation by attention and affect. More broadly, tinnitus illustrates a general principle of perception as constrained inference: when external informational constraints weaken, perceptual systems reorganize toward internally stabilized states rather than perceptual silence. This work is intentionally self-contained and does not rely on prior empirical validation or external theoretical derivations; related frameworks in predictive processing and dynamical systems are conceptually compatible but not assumed.