Department of Otolaryngology, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province, China.
Department of Radiology, Nanjing First Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China.
Neuroscience. 2024 Dec 6;562:182-189. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2024.10.037. Epub 2024 Oct 21.
The hippocampus and amygdala, as important components of the limbic system, play crucial roles in central remodeling in congenital hearing loss. This study aimed to investigate the morphological integrity and network properties of the subfields of hippocampus and amygdala in children with congenital hearing loss.
A total of 24 children with congenital hearing loss and 17 age- and sex- matched healthy controls (HC) are included in the study. T1-weighted images are analyzed by segmenting the brain into cortical and subcortical regions. Intergroup difference of volumes were explored. Structural covariance networks for the whole brain and hippocampus-amygdala subregions were constructed. Between-group differences of network property are investigated by comparing area under a range of network sparsity.
Patients with congenital hearing loss exhibited significantly larger volumes in the right dentate gyrus and CA3 of the hippocampus. However, there were no significant differences in total hippocampal or showed decreased global efficiency and increased characteristic path length, indicating reduced network integration. Lower betweenness centrality was observed in the left hippocampal fissure in the hearing loss group. The changes in volume and network topological properties are not affected by age and sex.
Children with congenital hearing loss display specific volumetric increases in hippocampal subregions, suggesting compensatory adaptations to auditory deprivation. The hippocampus-amygdala network shows significant reorganization, potentially underpinning cognitive and behavioral development issues associated with congenital hearing loss. These findings highlight the importance of targeted neural substrates in understanding and addressing the developmental challenges faced by children with congenital hearing loss.
海马体和杏仁核作为边缘系统的重要组成部分，在中枢重塑中起着至关重要的作用。本研究旨在探讨先天性听力损失儿童海马体和杏仁核亚区的形态完整性和网络特性。
共纳入 24 例先天性听力损失患儿和 17 例年龄和性别匹配的健康对照组（HC）。通过将大脑分割为皮质和皮质下区域来分析 T1 加权图像。探讨了容积的组间差异。构建了整个大脑和海马体-杏仁核亚区的结构协变网络。通过比较一系列网络稀疏度下的面积来研究网络属性的组间差异。
先天性听力损失患者的右侧海马体齿状回和 CA3 体积明显增大。然而，总海马体或全局效率降低、特征路径长度增加，提示网络整合减少，没有显著差异。听力损失组左侧海马裂的介数中心性降低。体积和网络拓扑性质的变化不受年龄和性别影响。
先天性听力损失儿童的海马体亚区显示出特定的体积增加，表明对听觉剥夺的代偿适应。海马体-杏仁核网络显示出明显的重组，可能为先天性听力损失相关的认知和行为发育问题提供了潜在的基础。这些发现强调了在理解和应对先天性听力损失儿童所面临的发育挑战时，靶向神经基质的重要性。
