Altered thalamo-cortical functional connectivity in patients with vestibular migraine: a resting-state fMRI study

Abstract

To explore the functional connectivity (FC) between the bilateral thalamus and the other brain regions in patients with vestibular migraine (VM). Resting-state fMRI and 3D-T1 data were collected from 37 patients with VM during the interictal period and 44 age-, gender-, and years of education-matched healthy controls (HC). The FC of the bilateral thalamus was analyzed using a standard seed-based whole-brain correlation method. Furthermore, the correlations between thalamus FC and clinical characteristics of patients were investigated using Pearson’s partial correlation. Compared with HC, VM patients showed decreased FC between the left thalamus and the left anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), bilateral insular and right supplementary motor cortex. We also observed decreased FC between the right thalamus and the left insular and ACC in VM patients. Furthermore, patients with VM also exhibited increased FC between the left thalamus and the right precuneus and middle frontal gyrus, between the right thalamus and superior parietal lobule. FC between the right thalamus and the left insular was negatively correlated with disease duration (p\u2009=\u20090.019, r\u2009=\u2009\u2009−\u20090.399), FC between the left thalamus and the left ACC was negatively correlated with HIT-6 score (p\u2009=\u20090.004, r\u2009=\u2009\u2009−\u20090.484). VM patients showed altered FC between thalamus and brain regions involved in pain, vestibular and visual processing, which are associated with specific clinical features. Specifically, VM patients showed reduced thalamo-pain and thallamo-vestibular pathways, while exhibited enhanced thalamo-visual pathway, which provided first insight into the underlying functional brain connectivity in VM patients.