Tinnitus as Auditory Wrong Attractor: Phantom Signal as Basin Lock-In, Central Sensitization as Ground State Destruction, and Habituation as Partial Return

We apply the Displacement Framework to tinnitus, formalizing it as entrapment in an auditory wrong attractor maintained by central gain increase following peripheral deafferentation. The auditory ground state S°_auditory is defined as the calibrated representational baseline in which the auditory cortex encodes real-world acoustic input at normal central gain. Cochlear hair cell damage removes peripheral input, triggering compensatory central gain increase that generates a phantom signal — the tinnitus wrong attractor — maintained without peripheral support.

Nine formal propositions are derived covering: S°_auditory as calibrated peripheral-anchored baseline, deafferentation-induced central gain increase as compensatory wrong attractor formation, the phantom signal as persistent wrong-attractor output, attentional hypervigilance as basin deepener through limbic-auditory coupling, the dissociation of distress magnitude from signal loudness (distress reflects Φ accumulation rather than D(ξ) magnitude), habituation as limbic disengagement rather than signal elimination, sound therapy as competing basin modification, Tinnitus Retraining Therapy as systematic limbic decoupling, and the parallel structure between tinnitus and phantom limb pain as central wrong attractors following peripheral deafferentation.

The framework explains why rational-seeming strategies (attention to the signal, checking whether it is still present) paradoxically deepen the wrong attractor, and why habituation rather than cure is the achievable clinical target.