Auditory processing in spinal cord injury: a preliminary investigation from a sensory deprivation perspective

Research on sensory deprivation suggests that the loss of somatosensory input to the central nervous system may have an impact on cortical reactivity and subsequent cognitive task efficiency. Individuals with spinal cord injury have a permanent loss of such input to varying degrees. However, there have been few investigations of cognitive processing in spinal cord injury. In this study, six outpatients with quadriplegia and 12 able-bodied controls were administered a dichotic listening task while auditory evoked response data and auditory threshold data were recorded. There were no differences between groups in terms of auditory threshold or auditory evoked responses. However, the outpatient quadriplegic group was more successful than the able-bodied controls in performing the dichotic listening task at one but not all levels of complexity. Results suggest that differences in cognitive processing ability between spinal cord injured and able-bodied individuals may reflect higher level motivational attention-concentration differences rather than more basic auditory and neurophysiologic processing differences.