Aberrant Modulations of Neurocognitive Network Dynamics in Migraine Comorbid With Tinnitus

Liping Lan; Yin Liu; Jin-Jing Xu; Di Ma; Xindao Yin; Yuanqing Wu; Yu-Chen Chen; Yuexin Cai

doi:10.3389/fnagi.2022.913191

Aberrant Modulations of Neurocognitive Network Dynamics in Migraine Comorbid With Tinnitus

Front Aging Neurosci. 2022 Jun 22:14:913191. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2022.913191. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Liping Lan¹, Yin Liu², Jin-Jing Xu³, Di Ma⁴, Xindao Yin², Yuanqing Wu³, Yu-Chen Chen², Yuexin Cai¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Otolaryngology, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.
² Department of Radiology, Nanjing First Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China.
³ Department of Otolaryngology, Nanjing First Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China.
⁴ College of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, China.

Abstract

Purpose: The possible relationship between migraine and tinnitus still remains elusive although migraine is often accompanied by chronic tinnitus. Several neuroimaging studies have reinforced the cognitive network abnormality in migraine and probably as well as tinnitus. The present work aims to investigate the dynamic neurocognitive network alterations of migraine comorbid with tinnitus.

Materials and methods: Participants included migraine patients (n = 32), tinnitus patients (n = 20), migraine with tinnitus (n = 27), and healthy controls (n = 47), matched for age and gender. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) with independent component analysis (ICA), sliding window cross-correlation, and clustering state analysis was used to detect the dynamic functional network connectivity (dFNC) of each group. Correlation analyses illustrated the association between clinical symptoms and abnormal dFNC in migraine as well as tinnitus.

Results: Compared with healthy controls, migraine patients exhibited decreased cerebellar network and visual network (CN-VN) connectivity in State 2; migraine with tinnitus patients showed not only decreased CN-VN connectivity in State 2 but also decreased cerebellar network and executive control network (CN-ECN) connectivity in State 2 and increased cerebellar network and somatomotor network (SMN-VN) connectivity in State 1. The abnormal cerebellum dFNC with the executive control network (CN-ECN) was negatively correlated with headache frequency of migraine (rho = -0.776, p = 0.005).

Conclusion: Brain network characteristics of migraine with tinnitus patients may indicate different mechanisms for migraine and tinnitus. Our results demonstrated a transient pathologic state with atypical cerebellar-cortical connectivity in migraine with tinnitus patients, which might be used to identify the neuro-pathophysiological mechanisms in migraine accompanied by tinnitus.

Keywords: executive control network; fMRI; migraine; neurocognitive network; tinnitus.