Example schematic of residual inhibition and residual excitation paradigms. In each half, the upper section shows the active (masker) condition and the lower section the control condition. The horizontal axis represents time, the shaded rectangles the auditory stimuli, the numbered brackets the data segments potentially used for analysis, the continuous black lines the intensity of tinnitus and the short vertical lines the instances where the patient rates their tinnitus intensity. The arrowed lines indicate the data segments used for further analysis in these examples and the categories to which they are assigned. Note that the ‘high’ and ‘low’ categories are relative, and paradigm-dependent, such that baseline tinnitus intensity is designated high and low in residual inhibition and residual excitation, respectively.