Brain Network Centrality In Patients With Meniere’s Disease:A Resting-State FMRI Study

Objective:Meniere’s Disease(MD)is a common chronic vertigo disease in clinic.The exact pathogenesis is still unclear.Previous studies have found abnormal changes in the brain structure and function of MD patients,suggesting that the onset of MD patients may be related to abnormalities in the central nervous system.The purpose of this study is to apply the degree centrality(DC)method to study the abnormal changes of the whole brain functional network in patients with MD at the voxel level,and to evaluate the relationship between functional network abnormalities and clinical symptoms in MD patients.Method:Forty-six MD patients(25 males and 21 females)diagnosed by the ear-nose-throat Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University from December 2020 to December 2022 were included.During the same time,we recruited 38 healthy people(19 males and 19 females)matched for age and sex as the healthy control.The subjects in the MD group were first scored with the Vertigo Dizziness handicap inventory(DHI)to evaluate the severity of their vertigo.All subjects were scanned by resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging to obtain data.These data were preprocessed by DPARSF software based on Matlab R2016 b platform.And then the whole brain DC value graph was obtained through calculation.In order to compare the DC values of the MD group and HC group,we used independent two-sample t-test to compare the difference of DC values between the two groups.Then,the receiver operating characteristic curve(ROC)was used to evaluate the diagnostic efficacy.Pearson correlation analysis was used to explore the relationship between the observed mean DC values of the different brain areas and the clinical features.Results:There were significant differences in brain network centrality between the MD group and the HC group.The DC values of the right fusiform gyrus and bilateral middle occipital gyrus in the MD group were higher than those in the HC group,and the DC values of the right supplementary motor cortex in the MD group were lower than those in the HC group.The correlation analysis showed that there was a significant positive correlation between the DC value of the left middle occipital gyrus and DHI score with MD patients(r=0.294,P=0.048).The ROC curve showed that the area under the curve(AUC)corresponding to the DC value of the right medial occipital gyrus was 0.804,which had high accuracy.Conclusion:The motor,visual and emotional networks in patients with MD has changes,and the compensatory of visual related network is associated with the severity of dizziness,which provides a new perspective for further exploring the neuropathological substrates of MD.