Unilateral deafness in children affects development of multi-modal modulation and default mode networks.
Monaural auditory input due to congenital or acquired unilateral hearing loss (UHL) may have neurobiological effects on the developing brain. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated the effect of UHL on the development of functional brain networks used for cross-modal processing. Children ages 7-12 with moderate or greater unilateral hearing loss of sensorineural origin (UHL-SN; N = 21) and normal-hearing controls (N = 23) performed an fMRI-compatible adaptation of the Token Test involving listening to a sentence such as "touched the small green circle and the large blue square" and simultaneously viewing an arrow touching colored shapes on a video. Children with right or severe-to-profound UHL-SN displayed smaller activation in a region encompassing the right inferior temporal, middle temporal, and middle occipital gyrus (BA 19/37/39), evidencing differences due to monaural hearing in cross-modal modulation of the visual processing pathway. Children with UHL-SN displayed increased activation in the left posterior superior temporal gyrus, likely the result either of more effortful low-level processing of auditory stimuli or differences in cross-modal modulation of the auditory processing pathway. Additionally, children with UHL-SN displayed reduced deactivation of anterior and posterior regions of the default mode network. Results suggest that monaural hearing affects the development of brain networks related to cross-modal sensory processing and the regulation of the default network during processing of spoken language.
Department of Radiology, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati OH, USA ; Department of Radiology, Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, Pittsburgh PA, USA.
Vincent J
VJ
Schmithorst
Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, The University of Arizona, Tucson AZ, USA.
Elena
E
Plante
Department of Radiology, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati OH, USA.
Scott
S
Holland
children; default mode network; functional MRI; multi-modal processing; unilateral hearing loss