Altered Functional Connectivity in Patients With Sloping Sensorineural Hearing Loss

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Auditory Neuroscience
• Brain Imaging

Background:

• Sensory deprivation, like hearing loss, alters brain functional connectivity (FC).
• Sloping sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) patients retain some auditory input and spoken language use.
• Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) is used to measure brain FC.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how SNHL affects intrinsic brain functional connectivity.
• To compare FC differences between prelingual and postlingual onset SNHL.
• To explore correlations between audiological scores and brain FC.

Main Methods:

• rs-fMRI was used to acquire whole-brain seed-driven FC maps.
• Twenty SNHL patients and 21 controls participated.
• Audiological scores (hearing loss severity, speech performance) were used as covariates.

Main Results:

• Prelingual SNHL showed enhanced long-range network connections (default-mode, dorsal-attention, fronto-parietal) and local sensory networks (visual, sensorimotor).
• Prelingual SNHL also exhibited increased connectivity in multisensory regions (frontal, parietal cortices, cerebellum).
• Postlingual SNHL demonstrated enhanced FC between the salience network, parietal areas, and hippocampus, with increased visual processing correlation.

Conclusions:

• Sloping hearing loss is associated with altered resting-state brain organization.
• Age of SNHL onset significantly impacts brain function, affecting attention, cognitive control, visual, and sensorimotor networks.
• Findings highlight sensitive periods in brain development and the brain's adaptation to partial hearing deficits.