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Early specialization in the auditory cortex for human voice in children with cochlear implants: an fNIRS study
Poster Session D, Thursday, October 1, 4:30 - 6:30 pm, Wangari Maathai
Indra Krönke1, Maria Grünig1, Willy Mattheus1, Richard Scholz1, Anja Hahne1; 1Neurocognition Research Group, Ear Research Center Dresden (ERCD), Carl Gustav Carus Faculty of Medicine, Technische Universität Dresden
The human voice, encompassing the full spectrum of human vocalizations, constitutes a fundamental modality of social communication and is crucial for language acquisition. Within the auditory cortex, the temporal voice area (TVA) has been described as a region selectively responsive to the processing of human vocalizations (Belin et al., 2000). Previous studies have demonstrated voice-selective cortical responses in adults as well as in children as young as five to six years of age (Raschle et al., 2014). However, the developmental trajectory of TVA specialization during early infancy is still poorly understood in typically hearing children, and its emergence in children with cochlear implants (CI) remains even less clear. Typically hearing infants aged three to five (N = 39) and seven to nine months (N = 35) were presented with human vocal stimuli (voice condition) and environmental sounds, such as rain or birdsong (non-voice condition). Brain activity was recorded using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). The identical experimental paradigm was applied in children with CI after three to five months (N = 30) and seven to nine months (N = 13) of implant experience. Statistical analyses were performed using the Brain AnalyzIR toolbox (Santosa et al., 2018) with mixed-effects modeling. Typically hearing infants aged three to five months did not show stronger cortical activation in response to vocal compared to non-vocal sounds. In contrast, infants aged seven to nine months exhibited significantly greater responses to vocal stimuli within auditory cortical regions. Children with CI demonstrated voice-selective activation not only after seven to nine months but already after three to five months of CI experience. These findings suggest that specialization for processing human vocalizations emerges between five and seven months of age in typically hearing infants, in line with previous work by Grossmann et al. (2010). In children with CI, however, selective responses to voices appear already after only three to five months of implant experience, despite this relatively short period of auditory experience. This earlier emergence may be related to their higher chronological age and the associated maturational advantages in cognitive and attentional processes.
Topic Areas: Disorders: Developmental,