Yarui Wei, 1 , 2 , † Wanlin Zhang, 3 , † Yu Li, 1 Xiangwei Liu, 3 Bixiang Zha, 3 Sheng Hu, 1 , 4 Yanming Wang, 1 Xiaoxiao Wang, 1 Xiaochun Yu, 5 , * Jun Yang, 3 , * and Bensheng Qiu 1 , *

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1Hefei National Lab for Physical Sciences at the Microscale and the Center for Biomedical Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

2Department of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China

3Department of Acupuncture and Rehabilitation, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Hefei, China

4School of Medical Information Engineering, Anhui University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Hefei, China

5Institute of Acupuncture and Moxibustion, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing, China

Edited by: Wenqing Xia, Nanjing No. 1 Hospital, China

Reviewed by: Xuan Wei, Capital Medical University, China; Vijaya Prakash Krishnan Muthaiah, University at Buffalo, United States; Jyothilakshmi Vasavan, Algonquin College, Canada

*Correspondence: Bensheng Qiu, nc.ude.ctsu@uiqb

Jun Yang, moc.621@pucanujgnay

Xiaochun Yu, nc.ca.mctnic.liam@cxuy

†These authors have contributed equally to this work

This article was submitted to Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience, a section of the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience

Abstract

Acupuncture is recommended for the relief of chronic tinnitus in traditional Chinese medicine, but the underlying neural mechanism remains unclear. The human brain is a dynamic system, and it’s unclear about acupuncture’s effects on the dynamic functional connectivity (DFC) of chronic tinnitus. Therefore, this study based on resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) investigates abnormal DFC in chronic tinnitus patients and the neural activity change evoked by acupuncture treatment for tinnitus. In this study, 17 chronic tinnitus patients and 22 age- and sex-matched normal subjects were recruited, and their tinnitus-related scales and hearing levels were collected. The fMRI data were measured before and after acupuncture, and then sliding-window and k-means clustering methods were used to calculate DFC and perform clustering analysis, respectively. We found that, compared with the normal subjects, chronic tinnitus patients had higher temporal variability of DFC between the supplementary motor area and medial part of the superior frontal gyrus, and it positively correlated with hearing loss. Clustering analysis showed higher transition probability (TP) between connection states in chronic tinnitus patients, and it was positively correlated with tinnitus severity. Furthermore, the findings showed that acupuncture treatment might improve tinnitus. DFC between the posterior cingulate gyrus and angular gyrus in chronic tinnitus patients after acupuncture showed significantly decreased, and it positively correlated with the improvement of tinnitus. Clustering analysis showed that acupuncture treatment might promote chronic tinnitus patients under lower DFC state, and it also positively correlated with the improvement of tinnitus. This study suggests that acupuncture as an alternative therapy method might decrease the tinnitus severity by decreasing the time variability of DFC in chronic tinnitus patients.

Keywords: acupuncture, chronic tinnitus, functional magnetic resonance imaging, dynamic functional connectivity, clustering analysis