An fMRI study of the neural mechanisms of third and fourth tone recognition in deaf children

Abstract

Vocal tone is an important component of language and it plays a key role in language comprehension and communication. However, children with hearing loss face challenges in vocal tone recognition due to hearing impairment. In this study, five deaf children and two children with normal hearing were recruited to compare the differences in third and fourth tone recognition tasks between deaf and normal children. The results revealed that (1) some of the deaf children's brain regions that process vocal tones did not work properly due to hearing loss; (2) deaf children may rely on different neural networks when processing vocal tone information. (3) Deaf children process vocal tone information with hemispheric characteristics.