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83rd Annual Meeting of the German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery

German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery

16.05. - 20.05.2012, Mainz

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Affective Processing in Tinnitus Patients assessed by fMRI

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German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery. 83rd Annual Meeting of the German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery. Mainz, 16.-20.05.2012. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2012. Doc12hno32

doi: 10.3205/12hno32, urn:nbn:de:0183-12hno325

Published: July 23, 2012

© 2012 Georgiewa et al.
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Outline

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Brain imaging studies suggested that the functional connectivity of various limbic, prefrontal, and temporal brain structures may play an important role in tinnitus.

We evaluated in affective processing of tinnitus patients by functional MRI (fMRI). Patients with tinnitus and healthy controls underwent fMRI (1.5 T scanner) during 4 blocks of auditory stimuli of different emotional quality: 1) unpleasant beep tones, 2) pleasant sounds of chimes, 3) neutral words, 4) words with affective valence, alternating with off-periods.

The comparison of activation patterns (SPM 99) revealed significant differences in the limbic system, in prefrontal regions, temporal association cortices and striatal regions independent of affective relevance of stimuli. Our results underline a differing affective perception of acoustic stimuli in tinnitus patients.