Skip Navigation


Brain Advance Access originally published online on September 26, 2006
Brain 2006 129(12):3376-3383; doi:10.1093/brain/awl264
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
129/12/3376    most recent
awl264v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Search for citing articles in:
ISI Web of Science (9)
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Disclaimer
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Doucet, M. E.
Right arrow Articles by Lepore, F.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Doucet, M. E.
Right arrow Articles by Lepore, F.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author (2006). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Cross-modal reorganization and speech perception in cochlear implant users

M. E. Doucet1, F. Bergeron2, M. Lassonde1, P. Ferron3 and F. Lepore1

1 Centre de Recherche en Neuropsychologie et Cognition, Université de Montréal Montréal, Canada 2 Université Laval Canada 3 Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Québec, Québec Canada

Correspondence to: Dr Franco Lepore, Département de Psychologie, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128, Succ. Centre-Ville, Montréal, Québec H3C 3J7, Canada E-mail: franco.lepore{at}umontreal.ca

Recent work suggests that once the auditory cortex of deaf persons has been reorganized by cross-modal plasticity, it can no longer respond to signals from a cochlear implant (CI) installed subsequently. To further examine this issue, we compared the evoked potentials involved in the processing of visual stimuli between CI users and hearing controls. The stimuli were concentric circles replaced by a different overlapping shape, inducing a shape transformation, known to activate the ventral visual pathway in human adults. All CI users had their device implanted for >1 year, but obtained different levels of auditory performance following training to establish language comprehension. Seven of the 13 patients showed good capacities for speech recognition with the CI (good performers) while the six others demonstrated poor speech recognition abilities (poor performers). The evoked potentials of all patients showed larger amplitudes, with different distributions of scalp activations between the two groups. The poor performers exhibited broader, anteriorly distributed, high P2 amplitudes over the cortex whereas the good performers showed significantly higher P2 amplitudes over visual occipital areas. These results suggest the existence of a profound cross-modal reorganization in the poor performers and an intramodal reorganization in the good performers. We interpret these data on the basis of enhanced audiovisual coupling as the key to a long-term functional improvement in speech discrimination in CI users.

Key Words: visual evoked potentials; transformational apparent motion; cochlear implant; cross-modal plasticity

Abbreviations: CI, cochlear implant; ERP, event related potentials; fMRI, functional MRI; TCPs, transformational concentric patterns; VEPs, visual-evoked potentials

Received March 13, 2006. Revised August 10, 2006. Accepted August 11, 2006.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 BrainHome page
H.-J. Lee, E. Truy, G. Mamou, D. Sappey-Marinier, and A.-L. Giraud
Visual speech circuits in profound acquired deafness: a possible role for latent multimodal connectivity
Brain, November 1, 2007; 130(11): 2929 - 2941.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Home page
 Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USAHome page
R. V. Shannon
Understanding hearing through deafness
PNAS, April 24, 2007; 104(17): 6883 - 6884.
[Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.