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Updated: Dec 24, 2025

Systematic Hearing Performance Evaluation Process for Adolescents with Cochlear Implantation at Early Ages
Published on: March 24, 2023
Auditory cortical processing in cochlear-implanted children with different language outcomes
Ola Abdallah Ibraheem1, Enaas Ahmad Kolkaila2, Ebtesam Hamed Nada3
1Audio-Vestibular Medicine Unit, Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, University of Zagazig, Zagazig, Egypt. ola_medvoice@yahoo.com.
Purpose:
Behavioral evaluation of language development is an important index for the usefulness of cochlear implantation. However, it could not apply to infants and very young children. It is useful to adopt an objective measure to examine speech discrimination in this population. Thus, the current study aimed to predict the different behavioral language performance (good versus poor) in cochlear implant (CI) recipients through the auditory cortical assessment of speech discrimination with mismatch negativity (MMN).
Methods:
The study comprised 40 CI children who were divided into two groups according to their behavioral language evaluation outcomes: 20 good and 20 poor CI performers. They were age, gender, and socioeconomically matched. The MMN was examined and compared between both groups with finding out the relationship between MMN and different variables.
Results:
MMN existed in all good performers and 87.5% of the poor performers. There were significantly shorter latency, larger amplitude, and a larger area of MMN in the good performers. The MMN results correlated with a significant predictive effect on the behavioral measures of language evaluation.
Conclusion:
The MMN is a clinically applicable objective measure of speech discrimination proficiency. Hence, it could be useful in CI programming and auditory cortical monitoring during rehabilitation.
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