PURPOSE: This review aimed at presenting the benefits regarding the speech perception in noise shown by children who wear hearing aid devices and/or cochlear implants with the Frequency Modulation (FM) System at school. RESEARCH STRATEGY: A bibliographic survey was conducted in an electronic database with standardized search until the year 2012, and a manual search was performed by using specific keywords. SELECTION CRITERIA: For the selection and evaluation of the scientific studies chosen in the search, criteria were established covering the following aspects: type of study, participants, adopted intervention, and evaluation of results. DATA ANALYSIS: The FM system was verified to improve speech perception and speech threshold in noise in all studies. RESULTS: Regarding the performance as to type, the best results were obtained when children used the personal FM system, followed by the table and the sound field systems. CONCLUSION: After extensive review of national and international literature, it was concluded that the studies indicate the need for further research concerning mainly the impact of the FM system on the school performance of children who have sensory devices coupled to the FM system. Findings in the literature with relation to the publications focused on speech perception in noise did not relate educational and auditory aspects.

Congenital toxoplasmosis (CT) is a known cause of hearing loss directly caused by Toxoplasma gondii. Hearing loss might result from sensory, neural, or sensorineural lesions. Early treated infants rarely develop hearing loss, but retinochoroidal lesions, intracranial calcifications and hydrocephalus are common. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the brain evoked hemodynamic responses of CT and healthy infants during four auditory stimuli: mother infant directed speech, researcher infant directed speech, mother reading and researcher recorded. Children underwent Transitionally Evoked Otoacoustic Emission Auditory Testing and Automated Brainstem Auditory Response tests with normal auditory results, but with a tendency for greater latencies in the CT group compared to the control group. We assessed brain hemodynamics with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) measurements from 61 infants, and we present fNIRS results as frequency maps of activation and deactivation for each stimulus. By evaluating infants in the three first months of life, we observed an individual heterogeneous brain activation pattern in response to all auditory stimuli for both groups. Each channel was activated or deactivated in less than 30% of children for all stimuli. There is a need of prospective studies to evaluate if the neurologic or auditory changes course with compromise of children outcomes.