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• Clinical Article •
The relationship between the abnormality of functional gradient and anxiety-depression disorders in patients with bilateral sudden sensorineural hearing loss
ZHU Haixue  LI Biao  FANG Zihuai  FENG Yuan  YIN Xindao  XU Xiaomin 

DOI:10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2025.08.001.


[Abstract] Objective Sudden sensorineural hearing loss is one of the otologic emergency diseases which often induces anxiety-depression like emotional impairments. But how sudden sensorineural hearing loss promotes the occurrence of emotional abnormalities is unclear. This study used brain functional gradient technique to explore the relationship between sudden sensorineural hearing loss and emotional impairments.Materials and Methods We evaluated hearing, multi-dimensional neural scales, and resting-state brain function gradients in 44 patients with sudden sensorineural hearing loss and 40 healthy controls. Functional connectivity gradients were used to identify alterations in cortical connectivity gradients induced by sudden bilateral sensorineural hearing loss. Statistical parametric mapping 12 (SPM12) was used to process functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, and Pearson's correlation was used to calculate the correlation between fMRI data and anxiety-depression like emotional impairments based on statistical package for the social sciences 22.0 (SPSS 22.0) software.Results Patients with sudden sensorineural hearing loss and healthy controls were well matched for age, gender and education level. The mean hearing thresholds of both ears in patients were significantly higher than healthy controls. The scores of anxiety and depression scales were significantly higher in patients with sudden sensorineural hearing loss. The results showed no significant difference in the primary gradient between the two groups. At the network level, patients with sudden sensorineural hearing loss showed no significant difference in the primary gradient. However, at the nodal level, increased gradient was observed in the left precuneus, while decreased gradients were observed in the left, right calcarine fissure and surrounding cortex, right parahippocampal gyrus and left medial superior frontal gyrus (P < 0.001). Moreover, there was a negative correlation between anxiety and the gradient of calcarine fissure and surrounding cortex in patients with sudden sensorineural hearing loss (r = -0.413, P = 0.005).Conclusions The functional gradient changes of brain regions in patients with sudden sensorineural hearing loss may help to clarify the neuropathological basis of emotional impairments in patients with sudden sensorineural hearing loss.
[Keywords] sudden sensorineural hearing loss；neural imaging；magnetic resonance imaging；functional gradient；anxiety；depression

ZHU Haixue1   LI Biao2   FANG Zihuai3   FENG Yuan3   YIN Xindao3   XU Xiaomin3*  

1 Department of Radiology, Taikang Xianlin Drum Tower Hospital, Afiliated Hospital of Medical School, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210046, China

2 Department of Otolaryngology, Nanjing First Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing 210006, China

3 Department of Radiology, Nanjing First Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing 210006, China

Corresponding author: XU X M, E-mail: xmxu15@163.com

Conflicts of interest   None.

Received  2025-02-24
Accepted  2025-08-08
DOI: 10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2025.08.001
DOI:10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2025.08.001.

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