AI Article Synopsis
- Tinnitus is a strange condition where people hear sounds without any external noise, and this study seeks to understand how it relates to brain structure changes due to stress and negative emotions.
- Using advanced imaging techniques, researchers compared brain scans of 14 tinnitus sufferers with 14 people who don’t have it, focusing on alterations in grey and white matter.
- The findings showed that those with tinnitus exhibited significant reductions in brain thickness in areas crucial for emotion and sound processing, indicating potential neural changes linked to the condition.
Article Abstract
Introduction: Tinnitus is a poorly understood auditory perception of sound in the absence of external stimuli. Convergent evidence proposes that tinnitus perception involves brain structural alterations as part of its pathophysiology. The aim of this study is to investigate the structural brain changes that might be associated with tinnitus-related stress and negative emotions.
Methods: Using high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion tensor imaging, we investigated grey matter and white matter (WM) alterations by estimating cortical thickness measures, fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity in 14 tinnitus subjects and 14 age- and sex-matched non-tinnitus subjects.
Results: Significant cortical thickness reductions were found in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), temporal lobe and limbic system in tinnitus subjects compared to non-tinnitus subjects. Tinnitus sufferers were found to have disrupted WM integrity in tracts involving connectivity of the PFC, temporal lobe, thalamus and limbic system.
Conclusion: Our results suggest that such neural changes may represent neural origins for tinnitus or consequences of tinnitus and its associations.
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00234-012-1044-6 | DOI Listing |
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