Evidence that cochlear-implanted deaf patients are better multisensory integrators

The cochlear implant (CI) is a neuroprosthesis that allows profoundly deaf patients to recover speech intelligibility. This recovery goes through long-term adaptative processes to build coherent percepts from the coarse information delivered by the implant. Here we analyzed the longitudinal postimpl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2007-04, Vol.104 (17), p.7295-7300
Main Authors: Rouger, J, Lagleyre, S, Fraysse, B, Deneve, S, Deguine, O, Barone, P
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Audiometry, Speech
Auditory Perception
Auditory Perception - physiology
Biological Sciences
Cochlear Implants
Deafness
Ears & hearing
Hearing Impaired Persons
Humans
Life Sciences
Lipreading
Middle Aged
Models, Psychological
Neurons and Cognition
Persons With Hearing Impairments - psychology
Prostheses
Speech Discrimination Tests
Speech therapy
Visual Perception
Visual Perception - physiology
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Summary:The cochlear implant (CI) is a neuroprosthesis that allows profoundly deaf patients to recover speech intelligibility. This recovery goes through long-term adaptative processes to build coherent percepts from the coarse information delivered by the implant. Here we analyzed the longitudinal postimplantation evolution of word recognition in a large sample of CI users in unisensory (visual or auditory) and bisensory (visuoauditory) conditions. We found that, despite considerable recovery of auditory performance during the first year postimplantation, CI patients maintain a much higher level of word recognition in speechreading conditions compared with normally hearing subjects, even several years after implantation. Consequently, we show that CI users present higher visuoauditory performance when compared with normally hearing subjects with similar auditory stimuli. This better performance is not only due to greater speechreading performance, but, most importantly, also due to a greater capacity to integrate visual input with the distorted speech signal. Our results suggest that these behavioral changes in CI users might be mediated by a reorganization of the cortical network involved in speech recognition that favors a more specific involvement of visual areas. Furthermore, they provide crucial indications to guide the rehabilitation of CI patients by using visually oriented therapeutic strategies.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.0609419104