Multimodal quantitative magnetic resonance imaging of the thalamus in tinnitus patients with different outcomes after sound therapy

Abstract

AimsThis study systematically investigated structural and functional alterations in the thalamus and its subregions using multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and examined its clinical relevance in tinnitus patients with different outcomes after sound therapy (narrowband noise).MethodsIn total, 60 patients with persistent tinnitus and 57 healthy controls (HCs) were recruited. Based on treatment efficacy, 28 patients were categorized into the effective group and 32 into the ineffective group. Five MRI measurements of the thalamus and its seven subregions, including gray matter volume, fractional anisotropy, fractional amplitude of low‐frequency fluctuation, and functional connectivity (FC), were obtained for each participant and compared between the groups.ResultsPatients in both the groups exhibited widespread functional and diffusion abnormalities in the whole thalamus and several subregions, with more obvious changes observed in the effective group. All tinnitus patients had abnormal FC compared with the HCs; FC differences between the two patient groups were only observed in the striatal network, auditory‐related cortex, and the core area of the limbic system. We combined the multimodal quantitative thalamic alterations and used it as an imaging indicator to evaluate prognosis before sound therapy and achieved a sensitivity of 71.9% and a specificity of 85.7%.ConclusionSimilar patterns of thalamic alterations were identified in tinnitus patients with different outcomes, with more obvious changes observed in the effective group. Our findings support the tinnitus generation hypothesis of frontostriatal gating system dysfunction. A combination of multimodal quantitative thalamic properties may be used as indicators to predict tinnitus prognosis before sound therapy.

Amygdala structural and functional reorganization as an indicator of affective dysfunction in patients with tinnitus

“…Preprocessing mainly involved resting‐state data preprocessing steps I–VI. The fALFF calculation was in complete agreement with those mentioned in previous studies (Chen et al, 2023a , 2023b ).…”

“…Consistent with those described in a previous study (Chen et al, 2023a), the main steps for the processing of the DTI data and analysis of WM integrity properties were as follows: conversion, estimation, cropping, co-registration, correction, averaging, and calculation of diffusion tensor metrics. The fractional anisotropy (FA) calculation process involved preprocessing, spatial normalization of individual FA maps to the MNI space, and smoothing using a…”

“…To mitigate the impact of MRI machine noise, the participants were typically provided with noise canceling earplugs and earmuffs. As the data were collected from the same database, the scanning parameters and patient preparation protocols used in this study were consistent with those of previous studies, as detailed by Chen et al (Chen et al, 2021;Chen et al, 2023a;Chen, Lv, et al, 2022). (III) an 8-mm full width at half maximum (FWHM) Gaussian kernel was used to smooth the GM/WM volumetric images.…”