Cross-Modal Functional Reorganization of Visual and Auditory Cortex in Adult Cochlear Implant Users Identified with fNIRS

Figure 1

Hypothesis. The upper row represents visual stimuli and the middle row represents auditory stimuli. The left column represents measurement over visual cortex and the right column represents measurement over auditory cortex. The solid lines represent NH controls and the dashed lines represent CI users. We hypothesized observations on reorganization of both visual and auditory cortex. Reorganization of auditory cortex (upper right) is defined as the higher amount of visual-evoked activation in auditory cortex observed in CI users compared to NH controls, which has been shown to be maladaptive in terms of speech performance for CI users. Reorganization of visual cortex (lower left) is defined as the higher amount of auditory-evoked activation in visual cortex observed in CI users compared to NH controls, which has been shown to be beneficial for CI speech performance. The bottom row shows the source and detector positions mapping to the cortex using a 3D digitizer on single participant.