Functional connectivity analysis of fMRI data collected from human subjects with chronic tinnitus and varying levels of tinnitus-related distress

Abstract

= 75). All data were obtained during an experiment in which subjects listened to auditory stimuli via headphones while undergoing fMRI scanning. The stimuli consisted of tones and bandpass noise presented at different frequencies. Stimulus frequency was the experimental factor, which was set (1) at each subject's tinnitus percept frequency (TF) and (2) at an unrelated control frequency (CF) at least one octave away from the TF stimuli. All subjects were presented with stimuli at these two frequencies. We refer the reader to our original research article "Functional brain changes in auditory phantom perception evoked by different stimulus frequencies" (Hullfish et al., 2018) for further discussion. Here, we present data specifically from group-level analyses where the subjects were divided according to their level of tinnitus-related distress. The high-distress (HD) group comprised 43 subjects with Tinnitus Questionnaire (TQ) scores greater than or equal to 47, out of a possible 82 points. The low-distress (LD) group comprised the remaining 32 subjects with TQ score less than 47. The data presented include contrasts of functional connectivity elicited by TF and CF stimuli in each group as well as contrasts between the two groups.