Gray matter density changes in children with congenital severe sensorineural deafness

2295 

Abstract Submission 

Yingxing Zhang¹, Jie Liu², Ya Wang³

¹Anhui Hospital Affiliated to Children’s Hospital of Fudan University/Anhui Children’s Hospital, Hefei, China, ²The First Affiliated Hospital of the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Hefei, ³Anhui Provincial Children’s Hospital, Hefei, Hefei

Yingxing Zhang  
Anhui Hospital Affiliated to Children’s Hospital of Fudan University/Anhui Children’s Hospital
Hefei, China

Jie Liu  
The First Affiliated Hospital of the University of Science and Technology of China
Hefei, Hefei

Ya Wang  
Anhui Provincial Children’s Hospital
Hefei, Hefei

The congenital severe sensorineural hearing loss (CSSHL) could lead to not only lifelong deafness but also affect cognitive functions, such as impaired executive function and abnormal social behavior (Proksch and Bavelier 2002). The voxel-based morphometry (VBM) involves a voxel-wise comparison of the local concentration of gray matter (GM) between two groups of subjects(Ashburner and Friston 2000). Until now, little information is available about the GM density changes in children with CSSHL and the results are inconsistent(Qi et al. 2019) (Wang et al. 2016). This study aimed to further explore the GM density changes in children with CSSHL.

Fifteen children with CSSHL at mean (SD) age (27±18.8months) and 11 healthy controls (HC) at mean (SD) age (31±15.5months) from August 2017 to September 2018 in the First Affiliated Hospital of the University of Science and Technology of China were enrolled in the study. The inclusion criteria of the children in CSSHL group were: (1) Children were presented with bilateral CSSHL. The exclusion criteria were: (1) Diagnosis of central nervous system diseases, such as cerebral white matter hypoplasia, neuroskin syndrome, tumor, etc. (3) History of ear surgery. All the HC had normal hearing function and no abnormality in head MRI scan.
The HC and CSSHL group were further divided into 0-2 years and 2-5 years by age, respectively. There are four groups: HC02(n=5), HC25(n=6), CSSHL02(n=8) and CSSHL25(n=7).
All participants underwent MRI scanning on a GE 3.0T magnetic resonance scanner (GE, 750W) under sedation. First, whole-brain cross-sectional images of T1WI and T2WI were acquired to exclude central nervous system lesions. Second, the structural MRI (sMRI) was collected using T1-3DBRAVO sequence.
GM density of all subjects was measured by FMRIB Software Library voxel-based morphometry (FSL-VBM, http://fsl.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/fsl).
A group-level analysis was applied to identify the GM differences between children with CSSHL and HC. For the global GM metrics, the statistical significance threshold was set to P < 0.05. For the regional GM maps, the significance threshold was set to P < 0.001 at the voxel level, followed by Gaussian random field (GRF) correction at the cluster level of P < 0.05. Cohen's d approach was used to calculate the effect size in the present study that reflected the statistical strength between groups(Lakens 2013).

A deficit in GM density in the right superior temporal gyrus (STG) and caudate body was found in the CSSHL group compared with the HC group (P < 0.05, Figure 1). At the same time, the GM density of the left posterior central gyrus (POG), superior frontal gyrus (SFG), inferior parietal lobule (IPL) and right cerebellum (CRB) in the CSSHL group was larger compared with the HC group (P < 0.05, Figure 1).
The GM density of the right STG in the CSSHL02 group and CSSHL25 group was smaller than that in the HC group of the corresponding age (Figure 2d). The GM density of the right caudate was larger in the HC25 group compared with the CSSHL25 group and HC02 group (Figure 2f). As for the left POG (Figure 2a), left SFG (Figure 2b), left IPL (Figure 2c) and right CRB (Figure 2e), the GM density was larger in CSSHL25 and CSSHL02 groups compared with that in HC group of corresponding age.
The GM density of the left SFG in the CSSHL group was prominently negatively correlated with age (R=-0.551, P=0.033), and the GM density of the left IPL was also negatively associated with age (R=-0.507, P=0.0537). Meanwhile, it is observed that the GM density of the right STG in the CSSHL group is positively correlated with age (R=0.498, P=0.0586).

Compared with HC, the GM density of CSSHL children was larger in somatosensory areas (including left SFG, POG, IPL and right CRB), while GM density was smaller in auditory-related areas (such as right STG and caudate). Moreover, GM density change is influenced by the duration of hearing deprivation.

Anatomical MRI ¹

Perception: Multisensory and Crossmodal ²

PEDIATRIC

STRUCTURAL MRI