Neural correlates of tinnitus related distress

Golm, Dennis, Meinhardt-Renner, Anne, Moser, Tobias, Dechent, Peter and Kroener-Herwig, Birgit (2010) Neural correlates of tinnitus related distress. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 17 (Suppl 1), S130-S130, [OS14-E]. (doi:10.1007/s12529-010-9106-9).

Abstract

About 4% of the German population experience chronic tinnitus, but only a minority suffers from it to an extent affecting quality of life. In order to explain tinnitus related distress, the neurophysiological model predicts associations of the tinnitus signal with an activation in limbic structures in distressed compared to non-distressed tinnitus patients. The aim of the study was to test this hypothesis by identifying neural correlates of tinnitus annoyance.

High and low distressed chronic tinnitus patients and healthy controls were examined in an emotional sentence task using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). During the task, participants evaluated the personal relevance of tinnitus related, general distress related and neutral sentences.

As a result high but not low distressed tinnitus patients showed activations in the Gyrus cinguli and Insula in reaction to tinnitus related vs. neutral sentences. Similar effects were found comparing distress related and neutral sentences. Additionally high distressed tinnitus patients showed an activation in the Gyrus cinguli in favor of tinnitus related compared to distress related sentences.

The effect seems to be a specific reaction to tinnitus related and not to generally distressing stimuli. So the results are in line with the neurophysiological model.

This record has no associated files available for download.

Contributors

Author: Dennis Golm

Download statistics