Yoo Hye Bin, De Ridder Dirk, Vanneste Sven
Lab for Clinical & Integrative Neuroscience, School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, W 1966 Inwood Rd., Dallas, TX, 75235, USA.
Department of Surgical Sciences, Section of Neurosurgery, Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Brain Topogr. 2016 Nov;29(6):885-896. doi: 10.1007/s10548-016-0511-5. Epub 2016 Aug 10.
Aging and sensorineural hearing loss are known to be involved in the development of chronic tinnitus. This study explores the structural changes of gray matter using surface base methods and focuses more specifically on changes in cortical thickness in 127 tinnitus patients. The linear relationships between cortical thickness and behavioral measures including aging, tinnitus loudness, tinnitus duration, tinnitus distress, and hearing loss were analyzed. Three dimensional T1-weighted MR images were acquired and cortical gray matter volumes were segmented using FreeSurfer on Talairach space. The results showed that cortical thickness and volume are negatively correlated to age in widespread regions of frontal cortices, and positively to bilateral entorhinal cortex and left rostral anterior cingulate cortex. The cortical thickness changes related to hearing loss overlap with those related to normal aging. The gray matter volumes of bilateral amygdalae, hippocampi, nuclei accumbens, and thalami are all significantly negatively correlated to age. Tinnitus-related distress level and subjective loudness were negatively correlated only to the thalamic volume. The results suggest that the primary factor of long-term structural changes in chronic tinnitus patients is age and age related hearing loss, rather than hearing loss per se. Tinnitus related factors such as subjective tinnitus loudness, tinnitus duration, and the level of chronic tinnitus related distress were not correlated to important morphometric changes in this study.
衰老和感音神经性听力损失被认为与慢性耳鸣的发生有关。本研究采用表面基线方法探索灰质的结构变化,并更具体地关注127例耳鸣患者的皮质厚度变化。分析了皮质厚度与包括年龄、耳鸣响度、耳鸣持续时间、耳鸣困扰和听力损失在内的行为指标之间的线性关系。采集三维T1加权磁共振图像,并使用FreeSurfer在Talairach空间上分割皮质灰质体积。结果表明,在额叶皮质的广泛区域,皮质厚度和体积与年龄呈负相关,与双侧内嗅皮质和左侧喙前扣带回皮质呈正相关。与听力损失相关的皮质厚度变化与正常衰老相关的变化重叠。双侧杏仁核、海马、伏隔核和丘脑的灰质体积均与年龄显著负相关。耳鸣相关困扰水平和主观响度仅与丘脑体积呈负相关。结果表明,慢性耳鸣患者长期结构变化的主要因素是年龄和与年龄相关的听力损失,而非听力损失本身。在本研究中,耳鸣相关因素如主观耳鸣响度、耳鸣持续时间和慢性耳鸣相关困扰水平与重要的形态学变化无关。