A 7 Tesla fMRI investigation of human tinnitus percept in cortical and subcortical auditory areas

Berlot, Eva; Arts, Remo A. G. J.; Smit, Jasper V.; George, Erwin L. J.; Gulban, Omer Faruk; Moerel, Michelle; Stokroos, Robert J.; Formisano, Elia; Martino, Federico De

doi:10.1016/j.nicl.2020.102166

Cited by 40 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…The present study showed reduced connections between the STG and associative areas that constitute an emerging feature of brain architecture. Our finding demonstrates that the STG is the main cortical hub in the brain network that is affected by acute tinnitus with hearing loss, which is in line with the hypothesis that the dysconnectivity pattern of the STG is involved in tinnitus perception (Chen et al, 2017a;Qu et al, 2019;Berlot et al, 2020). The STG is regarded as a critical region which receives the neuronal projection from auditory pathway (Binder, 2017) and has been reported to be associated with cognitive functions including memory, auditory cognition and semantics (Jackson et al, 2018).…”

Section: Functional Connectivity and Spontaneous Brain Activation In supporting

confidence: 89%

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

Cai

Xie

et al. 2020

Front. Neurosci.

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The 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. Methods: Acute 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. Results: Compared 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 nonauditory 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. Conclusion: Acute 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.

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Section: Functional Connectivity and Spontaneous Brain Activation In supporting

confidence: 89%

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

Cai

Xie

et al. 2020

Front. Neurosci.

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“…Anatomical changes in the brain were found in patients before and after sound therapy, mainly in the left thalamus, right thalamus, and cochlear nucleus. Regarding the morphological and functional changes associated with tinnitus, most previous studies and our recent research have focused on functional aspects, including the use of rest-state and task-state fMRI with 7 Tesla MR (Berlot et al, 2020), while research on the structural aspects has been relatively limited, especially for structural changes after treatment. However, there are structural changes in tinnitus patients (Schecklmann et al, 2013) and these changes will affect structure after treatment, so it is necessary to pay more attention to the structural changes associated with tinnitus patients.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neuroanatomical Alterations in Patients With Tinnitus Before and After Sound Therapy: A Voxel-Based Morphometry Study

Xuan

Wang

et al. 2020

Front. Neurosci.

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According to previous studies, many neuroanatomical alterations have been detected in patients with tinnitus. However, few studies have reported on the morphological changes observed following sound therapy. To explore the brain anatomical alterations in patients with idiopathic tinnitus using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis before and after effective 12 weeks sound therapy. The protocol was registered on ClinicalTrials.gov, ID: NCT02774122. In this study, we collected data from 27 matched healthy control (HC) individuals and 27 idiopathic tinnitus patients before and after 12 weeks of sound therapy by using adjusted narrow band sound. 3.0T MRI system and high-resolution 3D structural images were acquired with a 3D-BRAVO pulse sequence. Structural image data preprocessing was performed using the VBM8 toolbox. The Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI) score was acquired in the tinnitus group to assess the severity of tinnitus and tinnitus-related distress. Mann-Whitney U Test, Wilcoxon Signed-Ranks test, and Pearson's correlation analysis were used in the statistical analysis. We found significantly decreased gray matter (GM) volume in the left thalami, right thalami, and cochlear nucleus among the tinnitus patients before sound therapy (baseline) compared to the HC group. However, we did not find significant differences in brain regions between the 12-week treatment and HC groups. According to the results of Wilcoxon Signed-Ranks test, the 12-week sound therapy group demonstrated significant greater brain volume compared with the baseline group among these brain regions. Decreased THI score and changed GM volume were not correlated. This is a useful study for observing the characteristics of neuroanatomical changes in patients with idiopathic tinnitus before and after sound treatment. The study characterized the effect of sound therapy on brain volume. It found that sound therapy had a normalizing effect on the bilateral thalami and cochlear nucleus.

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“…One reason for this is ongoing controversy about the neuronal pathophysiology of tinnitus. While many authors postulate that peripheral auditory damage leads to tinnitus by an increase in neural gain (12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22), recent studies propose that tinnitus without hyperacusis occurs when the reduced auditory input fails to increase neural gain (23)(24)(25).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Co-occurrence of Hyperacusis Accelerates With Tinnitus Burden Over Time and Requires Medical Care

et al. 2021

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Although tinnitus represents a major global burden, no causal therapy has yet been established. Ongoing controversies about the neuronal pathophysiology of tinnitus hamper efforts in developing advanced therapies. Hypothesizing that the unnoticed co-occurrence of hyperacusis and differences in the duration of tinnitus may possibly differentially influence the neural correlate of tinnitus, we analyzed 33 tinnitus patients without (T-group) and 20 tinnitus patients with hyperacusis (TH-group). We found crucial differences between the T-group and the TH-group in the increase of annoyance, complaints, tinnitus loudness, and central neural gain as a function of tinnitus duration. Hearing thresholds did not differ between T-group and TH-group. In the TH-group, the tinnitus complaints (total tinnitus score) were significantly greater from early on and the tinnitus intensity distinctly increased over time from ca. 12 to 17 dB when tinnitus persisted more than 5 years, while annoyance responses to normal sound remained nearly constant. In contrast, in the T-group tinnitus complaints remained constant, although the tinnitus intensity declined over time from ca. 27 down to 15 dB beyond 5 years of tinnitus persistence. This was explained through a gradually increased annoyance to normal sound over time, shown by a hyperacusis questionnaire. Parallel a shift from a mainly unilateral (only 17% bilateral) to a completely bilateral (100%) tinnitus percept occurred in the T-group, while bilateral tinnitus dominated in the TH-group from the start (75%). Over time in the T-group, ABR wave V amplitudes (and V/I ratios) remained reduced and delayed. By contrast, in the TH-group especially the ABR wave III and V (and III/I ratio) continued to be enhanced and shortened in response to high-level sound stimuli. Interestingly, in line with signs of an increased co-occurrence of hyperacusis in the T-group over time, ABR wave III also slightly increased in the T-group. The findings disclose an undiagnosed co-occurrence of hyperacusis in tinnitus patients as a main cause of distress and the cause of complaints about tinnitus over time. To achieve urgently needed and personalized therapies, possibly using the objective tools offered here, a systematic sub-classification of tinnitus and the co-occurrence of hyperacusis is recommended.

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A 7 Tesla fMRI investigation of human tinnitus percept in cortical and subcortical auditory areas

Cited by 40 publications

References 52 publications

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

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

Neuroanatomical Alterations in Patients With Tinnitus Before and After Sound Therapy: A Voxel-Based Morphometry Study

Co-occurrence of Hyperacusis Accelerates With Tinnitus Burden Over Time and Requires Medical Care

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