Altered Structural Connectome of Children with Auditory Processing Disorder: A Diffusion MRI Study

Date
2023-03-16
Authors
Alvand, Ashkan
Kuruvilla-Mathew, Abin
Roberts, Reece P
Pedersen, Mangor
Kirk, Ian J
Purdy, Suzanne C
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Item type
Journal Article
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Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Abstract

Auditory processing disorder (APD) is a listening impairment that some school-aged children may experience despite having normal peripheral hearing. Recent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has revealed an alteration in regional functional brain topology in children with APD. However, little is known about the structural organization in APD. We used diffusion MRI data to investigate the structural connectome of 58 children from 8 to 14 years old diagnosed with APD (n = 29) and children without hearing complaints (healthy controls, HC; n = 29). We investigated the rich-club organization and structural connection differences between groups. The APD group showed similar rich-club organization and edge-wise connection compared with the HC group. However, at the regional level, we observed increased average path length (APL) and betweenness centrality in the right inferior parietal lobule and inferior precentral gyrus, respectively, in the APD group. Only HCs demonstrated a positive association between APL and the listening-in-spatialized-noise-sentences task in the left orbital gyrus. In line with previous findings, the current results provide evidence for altered structural networks at the regional level in the APD group, suggesting the involvement of multimodal deficits and a role for structure-function alteration in the listening difficulties of children with APD.

Description
Keywords
auditory processing disorder , diffusion MRI , graph theory , rich-club , structural connectivity , auditory processing disorder , diffusion MRI , graph theory , rich-club , structural connectivity , 32 Biomedical and Clinical Sciences , 3202 Clinical Sciences , Neurosciences , Pediatric , Biomedical Imaging , Ear , 1109 Neurosciences , 1701 Psychology , 1702 Cognitive Sciences , Experimental Psychology , 3209 Neurosciences , 5202 Biological psychology , 5204 Cognitive and computational psychology
Source
Cerebral Cortex, ISSN: 1047-3211 (Print); 1460-2199 (Online), Oxford University Press, bhad075-. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhad075
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