The evaluation of the spontaneous activity of 471 units from the external nucleus of the IC revealed that salicylate induces an increase of the spontaneous activity and the emergence of a bursting type of activity longer than 4 spikes. For sharply tuned units, the affected cells were from the frequency range of 10-16 kHz, which corresponds to the behaviorally measured pitch of salicylate-induced tinnitus in rats. An exogenous calcium supplement, provided under the conditions shown to attenuate the behavioral manifestation of salicylate-induced tinnitus, abolished the modification of the spontaneous activity induced by salicylate. Finally, profound changes of activity were observed for cells not responding to contralateral sound. We propose that the observed long bursts of discharges represent tinnitus-related neuronal activity. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that GABA-mediated disinhibition is involved in the processing of tinnitus-related neuronal activity.