The Neural Processing of Vocal Emotion After Hearing Reconstruction in Prelingual Deaf Children: A Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Brain Imaging Study

Abstract

As elucidated by prior research, children with hearing loss have impaired vocal emotion recognition compared with their normal-hearing peers. Cochlear implants (CIs) have achieved significant success in facilitating hearing and speech abilities for people with severe-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss. However, due to the current limitations in neuroimaging tools, existing research has been unable to detail the neural processing for perception and the recognition of vocal emotions during early stage CI use in infant and toddler CI users (ITCI). In the present study, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) imaging was employed during preoperative and postoperative tests to describe the early neural processing of perception in prelingual deaf ITCIs and their recognition of four vocal emotions (fear, anger, happiness, and neutral). The results revealed that the cortical response elicited by vocal emotional stimulation on the left pre-motor and supplementary motor area (pre-SMA), right middle temporal gyrus (MTG), and right superior temporal gyrus (STG) were significantly different between preoperative and postoperative tests. These findings indicate differences between the preoperative and postoperative neural processing associated with vocal emotional stimulation. Further results revealed that the recognition of vocal emotional stimuli appeared in the right supramarginal gyrus (SMG) after CI implantation, and the response elicited by fear was significantly greater than the response elicited by anger, indicating a negative bias. These findings indicate that the development of emotional bias and the development of emotional perception and recognition capabilities in ITCIs occur on a different timeline and involve different neural processing from those in normal-hearing peers. To assess the speech perception and production abilities, the Infant-Toddler Meaningful Auditory Integration Scale (IT-MAIS) and Speech Intelligibility Rating (SIR) were used. The results revealed no significant differences between preoperative and postoperative tests. Finally, the correlates of the neurobehavioral results were investigated, and the results demonstrated that the preoperative response of the right SMG to anger stimuli was significantly and positively correlated with the evaluation of postoperative behavioral outcomes. And the postoperative response of the right SMG to anger stimuli was significantly and negatively correlated with the evaluation of postoperative behavioral outcomes.

Multitarget high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation improves response inhibition more than single-target high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation in healthy participants

“…We had to regard this label as the pre-SMA label. This practice is in line with previous studies which also used the pre-SMA to refer to the "Pre-Motor and Supplementary Motor Cortex" (Wang et al, 2021).…”

Reduction of right-hemispheric auditory cortex activity in response to speech in more experienced paediatric cochlear implant users

“…Although there was a small trend in this direction, no such effect was observed in both CI groups and no differences between the FIXED and VARIABLE PROSODY conditions were evident. This finding is in line with two recent cross-sectional fNIRS studies (Chen et al, 2022;Wang et al, 2021) that also did not report right-lateralised processing of prosodic features in paediatric CI users. In addition to those two studies, the current results…”

“…This suggests that prior experience with normal acoustic hearing might be required to perceive these stimulus features. However, it should also be noted that both in the present experiment and the two other fNIRS studies that investigated the cortical processing of prosody in paediatric CI users (Chen et al, 2022;Wang et al, 2021), response amplitudes were very small in comparison to the respective NH control groups. The low signal-to-noise ratio of the data therefore made it difficult to reveal differences between experimental conditions as well as the two CI groups.…”

Cochlear implant-specific risks should be considered, when assessing the quality of life of children and adolescents with hearing loss and cochlear implants–not just cochlear implant-specific benefits–Perspective

“…Numerous studies indicate that children and adolescents with congenital or early onset severe and profound hearing loss benefit from CI: it provides a clear benefit in the development of brain regions associated with hearing ( Sharma et al, 2002 ; Kral and Sharma, 2012 ; Kral et al, 2016 ; Cardon and Sharma, 2019 ; Lee et al, 2020 ; Wang et al, 2021 ) and supports auditory development ( Purcell et al, 2021 ) as well as the development of spoken language ( Percy-Smith et al, 2008 ; Peters et al, 2010 ; Geers et al, 2016 ). In particular, very early implantation ( Dettman et al, 2016 ; Ruben, 2018 ; Sharma et al, 2020 ; Naik et al, 2021 ) and bilateral implantations ( Lieu et al, 2020 ; Sharma et al, 2020 ) benefit the development of verbal language.…”