Aberrant Functional and Causal Connectivity in Acute Tinnitus With Sensorineural Hearing Loss

Frontiers in Neuroscience

Fei Zhao²  Caiping Dang⁴  Yun Su⁵  Xiaoyan Wu⁵  Jun Shen⁵  Mingwei Xie⁵  Yuexin Cai⁷  Liping Lan⁷  Wenchao Xu⁷  Zhaopeng Tong⁷  Guisheng Chen⁷  Jiahong Li⁷  Yiqing Zheng⁷ 

[1] Affiliated Brain Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China;Department of Hearing and Speech Science, Xinhua College, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China;Department of Otolaryngology, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China;Department of Psychology, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China;Department of Radiology, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China;Department of Speech and Language Therapy and Hearing Science, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Cardiff, United Kingdom;Institute of Hearing and Speech-Language Science, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China;

关键词: acute tinnitus;    hearing loss;    functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI);    functional connectivity;    causal connectivity;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fnins.2020.00592

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

PurposeThe neural bases in acute tinnitus remains largely undetected. The objective of this study was to identify the alteration of the brain network involved in patients with acute tinnitus and hearing loss.MethodsAcute tinnitus patients (n = 24) with hearing loss and age-, sex-, education-matched healthy controls (n = 21) participated in the current study and underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning. Regional homogeneity and amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation were used to investigate the local spontaneous neural activity and functional connectivity (FC), and Granger causality analysis (GCA) was used to analyze the undirected and directed connectivity of brain regions.ResultsCompared with healthy subjects, acute tinnitus patients had a general reduction in FC between auditory and non-auditory brain regions. Based on FC analysis, the superior temporal gyrus (STG) revealed reduced undirected connectivity with non-auditory brain regions including the amygdala (AMYG), nucleus accumbens (NAc), the cerebellum, and postcentral gyrus (PoCG). Using the GCA algorithm, increased effective connectivity from the right AMYG to the right STG, and reduced connectivity from the right PoCG to the left NAc was observed in acute tinnitus patients with hearing loss. The pure-tone threshold was positively correlated with FC between the AMYG and STG, and negatively correlated with FC between the left NAc and the right PoCG. In addition, a negative association between the GCA value from the right PoCG to the left NAc and the THI scores was observed.ConclusionAcute tinnitus patients have aberrant FC strength and causal connectivity in both the auditory and non-auditory cortex, especially in the STG, AMYG, and NAc. The current findings will provide a new perspective for understanding the neuropathophysiological mechanism in acute tinnitus.

【 授权许可】

Unknown