Deficient sensory and cognitive processing in children with cochlear implants: An event-related potential study
Zhe Hu1, Jia-Qiang Sun1, Rui-Rui Guan2
1Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230001, China.
Hearing Research
|June 27, 2021
Summary
Children with cochlear implants (CIs) show impaired speech perception due to deficits in both early acoustic processing and later cognitive functions. This electroencephalography study reveals differences in brain responses during complex language tasks.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Speech Perception Research
- Auditory Neuroscience
Background:
- Children with cochlear implants (CIs) often struggle with spoken language comprehension compared to those with normal hearing (NH).
- This difficulty may stem from issues in both basic sound processing and more complex cognitive functions.
- Understanding the neural dynamics of speech perception in CI users is crucial for improving auditory rehabilitation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the brain dynamics of speech perception in children with cochlear implants (CIs) using electroencephalography (EEG).
- To compare the neural responses to auditory stimuli in CI users and normally hearing children.
- To identify specific deficits in early acoustic encoding and later cognitive processing during speech perception in CI users.
Main Methods:
- An electroencephalography (EEG) study was conducted with children with cochlear implants (CIs) and normally hearing (NH) children.
- Participants listened to Mandarin Chinese monosyllables and four-syllable idioms presented in an oddball paradigm, where lexical tones were infrequently varied.
- Mismatch negativity (MMN) and late discriminative negativity (LDN) brain responses were recorded and analyzed.
Main Results:
- Both CI and NH children showed similar early mismatch negativities (MMNs) to tone contrasts in simple monosyllables.
- However, CI children exhibited significantly lower MMN amplitudes for tone contrasts within the complex idiom context compared to NH children.
- Robust late discriminative negativity (LDN) was observed in NH children but was absent in CI children, indicating impaired higher-level cognitive processing.
Conclusions:
- Cochlear implant use is associated with deficits in low-level acoustic encoding within complex linguistic contexts.
- Higher-level cognitive processing, essential for understanding speech in challenging situations, is also impaired in children with CIs.
- These combined sensory and cognitive processing deficits likely underlie the persistent speech perception difficulties experienced by CI users.
