Cortical thickness of left Heschl's gyrus correlates with hearing acuity in adults - A surface-based morphometry study.

Cortical thickness of left Heschl's gyrus correlates with hearing acuity in adults - A surface-based morphometry study. Hear Res. 2019 Oct 18;384:107823 Authors: Neuschwander P, Hänggi J, Zekveld AA, Meyer M Abstract To date, research examining the relationship between brain structure and hearing acuity is sparse, especially given the context of a broad age range. To investigate this relationship, we applied an automated surface-based morphometry (SBM) approach (FreeSurfer) in this study to re-examine a sample of normal-hearing (n = 17) and hearing-impaired (n = 17) age- and education-matched adults, aged between 20 and 63 years (Alfandari et al., 2018). The SBM approach allows the disentanglement of cortical surface area (CSA) from cortical thickness (CT), the 2 independent constituents of cortical volume (CV). We extend the findings of Alfandari and colleagues by showing several clusters in auditory-related areas as well as in the left and right angular gyrus that showed reduced CT, CSA and CV in hearing-impaired compared to normal-hearing listeners. Nevertheless, none of the clusters found correlated significantly with hearing acuity, measured by pure-tone thresholds, in the 2 groups. An additional vertex-wise correlation analysis between hearing acuity and morphometric parameters over all participants revealed a single significant cluster encompassing the left Heschl's gyrus. Higher hearing thresholds were associated wi...
Source: Hearing Research - Category: Audiology Authors: Tags: Hear Res Source Type: research