Abstract
Purpose: The neural mechanisms that give rise to the phantom sound of tinnitus have not been fully elucidated. Neuroimaging studies have revealed abnormalities in resting-state activity that could represent the neural signature of tinnitus, but there is considerable heterogeneity in the data. To address this issue, we conducted a meta-analysis of published neuroimaging studies aimed at identifying a common core of resting-state brain abnormalities in tinnitus patients.Methods: A systematic search was conducted for whole-brain resting-state neuroimaging studies with SPECT, PET and functional MRI that compared chronic tinnitus patients with healthy controls. The authors searched PubMed, Science Direct, Web of Knowledge and Embase databases for neuroimaging studies on tinnitus published up to September 2016. From each study, coordinates were extracted from clusters with significant differences between tinnitus subjects and controls. Meta-analysis was performed using the activation likelihood estimation (ALE) method.Results: Data were included from nine resting-state neuroimaging studies that reported a total of 51 distinct foci. The meta-analysis identified consistent regions of increased resting-state brain activity in tinnitus patients relative to controls that included, bilaterally, the insula, middle temporal gyrus (MTG), inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), parahippocampal gyrus, cerebellum posterior lobe and right superior frontal gyrus. Moreover, decreased brain activity was only observed in the left cuneus and right thalamus.Conclusions: The current meta-analysis is, to our knowledge, the first to demonstrate a characteristic pattern of resting-state brain abnormalities that may serve as neuroimaging markers and contribute to the understanding of neuropathophysiological mechanisms for chronic tinnitus.
Highlights
Tinnitus is the conscious perception of sound in the absence of an internal or external acoustic signal (Jastreboff, 1990)
One of the major questions is what regions of the human brain are involved in tinnitus, a question that has been explored in numerous imaging studies (Jastreboff et al, 1994; Lockwood et al, 1998; Mirz et al, 2000; Rauschecker et al, 2010; De Ridder et al, 2014b)
The current study is the first whole-brain meta-analysis exploring the resting-state brain abnormalities in chronic tinnitus patients compared to healthy controls
Summary
Tinnitus is the conscious perception of sound in the absence of an internal or external acoustic signal (Jastreboff, 1990). Evidences suggest that other brain regions outside the classical auditory pathway may involve attentional mechanisms that contribute to the persistent awareness of the phantom sound as well as the development of anxiety and distress leading to disabling features of chronic tinnitus (Mirz et al, 2000; Schmidt et al, 2013; Henry et al, 2014). One of the major questions is what regions of the human brain are involved in tinnitus, a question that has been explored in numerous imaging studies (Jastreboff et al, 1994; Lockwood et al, 1998; Mirz et al, 2000; Rauschecker et al, 2010; De Ridder et al, 2014b)
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