Neural preservation underlies speech improvement from auditory deprivation in young cochlear implant recipients.

ABSTRACT: Although cochlear implantation enables some children to attain age-appropriate speech and language development, communicative delays persist in others, and outcomes are quite variable and difficult to predict, even for children implanted early in life. To understand the neurobiological basis of this variability, we used presurgical neural morphological data obtained from MRI of individual pediatric cochlear implant (CI) candidates implanted younger than 3.5 years to predict variability of their speech-perception improvement after surgery. We first compared neuroanatomical density and spatial pattern similarity of CI candidates to that of age-matched children with normal hearing, which allowed us to detail neuroanatomical networks that were either affected or unaffected by auditory deprivat

SUBMITTER: Feng G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5798370 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature