Auditory recovery and speechreading in cochlear implanted deaf patients: A review

Abstract

In this review, we discuss evidence from our recent studies and the literature that deaf patients after cochlear implantation partly rely on visual cues during auditory recovery and develop mechanisms of audio-visual integration as a strategy to maintain high levels of speech recognition in the noisy auditory environments provided by cochlear implants. This evidence is considered both at the behavioural level and at the level of cortical activity as explored by studies in functional neuroimaging. Since coupling different modalities facilitates perceptual learning in a single modality, we believe that a strong visually and audio-visually based rehabilitation during the first months after cochlear implantation would significantly improve and hasten the functional recovery of speech intelligibility and other auditory functions in these patients.

Key words::

• cochlear implantation
• audiovisual integration
• functional rehabilitation
• speechreading

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by ACI Neurosciences Intégratives et Computationnelles (to OD, PB), Fédération pour la Recherche sur le Cerveau (to PB), ANR Hearing Loss, ANR-06-Neuro-021-04 (OD, PB), CNRS Atip+ program (KS, BP), Fondation de l’Avenir (OD).

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.