Vincent Jerome Schmithorst1, Scott Kerry
Holland1, Elena Plante2
1Radiology, Children's Hospital Medical
Center, Cincinnati, OH, United States; 2Speech, Language, &
Hearing Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States
An
fMRI investigation of cross-modal plasticity (the recruitment of visual areas
for auditory processing tasks) was conducted in normal-hearing children ages
7-11. Activation patterns from a
narrow-band noise task were correlated with two audiological measures of
performance on comprehension of degraded speech: speech-in-noise, and
time-compressed sentences at 40% comprehension. For both audiologic tests, the visual
cortex displayed a negative correlation with test performance, with positive
activation present in the worst-performing children. Results indicate that cross-modal
plasticity is present even in normal-hearing children and even for non-speech
stimuli and that it negatively correlates with comprehension of degraded
speech.