Connectivity in language areas of the brain in cochlear implant users as revealed by fNIRS

Abstract

Many studies, using a variety of imaging techniques, have shown that deafness induces functional plasticity in the brain of adults with late-onset deafness, and in children changes the way the auditory brain develops. Cross modal plasticity refers to evidence that stimuli of one modality (e.g. vision) activate neural regions devoted to a different modality (e.g. hearing) that are not normally activated by those stimuli. Other studies have shown that multimodal brain networks (such as those involved in language comprehension, and the default mode network) are altered by deafness, as evidenced by changes in patterns of activation or connectivity within the networks. In this paper, we summarise..