Visual-cortex contribution to speech grows over time in implant users

Evidence

Not all studies have suggested detrimental effects of brain changes due to deafness on the ability to adapt to listening with a CI. Two studies by Giraud et al used PET to study the activity induced by speech stimuli in CI users. The first showed that, compared to normal-hearing listeners, they had altered functional specificity of the superior temporal cortex, and exhibited contribution of visual regions to sound recognition (Giraud et al. 2001a ). Secondly, the contribution of the visual cortex to speech recognition increased over time after implantation (Giraud et al. 2001b ), suggesting that the CI users were actively using enhanced audio-visual integration to facilitate their learning of the novel speech sounds received through the CI. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 4278

Categorization

• XREF: Audio-visual integration as a learning mechanism parallels the McGurk-effect literature and multimodal speech perception research.