Characterizing responses from auditory cortex in young people with several years of cochlear implant experience

Researchers attempted to determine if "cortical responses evoked by a cochlear implant in children who are deaf differ from normal and to characterize these differences in children who achieve good versus fair speech perception outcomes post-implantation."

They found that:

(1) a dominant positive wave in all implant users and (2) a larger than normal negative amplitude peak in users with fair speech perception scores which had similar scalp topography to N1 but did not show the expected changes in amplitude with stimulus frequency.

Late latency-evoked potential responses in children using cochlear implants reflect abnormal and/or immature patterns of cortical activity.

Limitations in auditory skills with a cochlear implant in children may be due to developmental processes in the cortex which are either slow to mature or which mature abnormally.