Objective: To investigate the alterations in microstructural gray matter (GM) and white matter (WM) in adults with prelingual sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) using diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) and explore whether the clinical data are associated with the whole brain structure changes in SNHL subjects.
Study design: Prospective case study.
Setting: Tertiary class A teaching hospital.
Patients: Eighty adults with prelingual SNHL.
Intervention: Diagnostic.
Main outcome measure: DKI-derived metrics, including mean kurtosis, radial kurtosis, axial kurtosis, fractional anisotropy, mean diffusivity, radial diffusivity, and axial diffusivity were applied to explore the differences in GM and WM between the groups across the whole brain with voxel-based analysis.
Results: Compared with the control group, adults with prelingual SNHL exhibited significantly decreased fractional anisotropy, mean kurtosis, radial kurtosis, and axial kurtosis in the bilateral superior temporal gyrus in both the GM and WM. No correlations were detected between these alterations and clinical data.
Conclusions: These findings suggest that DKI can provide comprehensive characteristics to demonstrate reductions in the auditory cortical GM and hypomyelination of WM fibers in the auditory pathway caused by auditory deprivation early in life.