Institute for Human Neuroscience, Boys Town National Research Hospital (BTNRH), Omaha, NE, USA; Center for Magnetoencephalography (MEG), University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), Omaha, NE, USA.
Wendell Johnson Speech and Hearing Center, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA.
Neuroimage Clin. 2021;30:102647. doi: 10.1016/j.nicl.2021.102647. Epub 2021 Mar 29.
Children with hearing loss (CHL) exhibit delays in language function relative to children with normal hearing (CNH). However, evidence on whether these delays extend into other cognitive domains such as working memory is mixed, with some studies showing decrements in CHL and others showing CHL performing at the level of CNH. Despite the growing literature investigating the impact of hearing loss on cognitive and language development, studies of the neural dynamics that underlie these cognitive processes are notably absent. This study sought to identify the oscillatory neural responses serving verbal working memory processing in CHL compared to CNH. To this end, participants with and without hearing loss performed a verbal working memory task during magnetoencephalography. Neural oscillatory responses associated with working memory encoding and maintenance were imaged separately, and these responses were statistically evaluated between CHL and CNH. While CHL performed as well on the task as CNH, CHL exhibited significantly elevated alpha-beta activity in the right frontal and precentral cortices during encoding relative to CNH. In contrast, CHL showed elevated alpha maintenance-related activity in the right precentral and parieto-occipital cortices. Crucially, right superior frontal encoding activity and right parieto-occipital maintenance activity correlated with language ability across groups. These data suggest that CHL may utilize compensatory right-hemispheric activity to achieve verbal working memory function at the level of CNH. Neural behavior in these regions may impact language function during crucial developmental ages.
患有听力损失（CHL）的儿童在语言功能上相对于听力正常（CNH）的儿童表现出延迟。然而，关于这些延迟是否会扩展到其他认知领域，如工作记忆，证据并不一致，一些研究表明 CHL 存在缺陷，而另一些研究则表明 CHL 的表现与 CNH 相当。尽管越来越多的研究调查听力损失对认知和语言发展的影响，但关于这些认知过程背后的神经动力学的研究却明显缺乏。本研究旨在确定与 CHL 相比，在 CNH 中用于言语工作记忆处理的振荡神经反应。为此，听力正常和听力损失的参与者在脑磁图（MEG）期间执行言语工作记忆任务。分别对与工作记忆编码和维持相关的神经振荡反应进行成像，并在 CHL 和 CNH 之间对这些反应进行统计评估。虽然 CHL 在任务中的表现与 CNH 一样好，但与 CNH 相比，CHL 在编码期间右额前和中央皮质的 alpha-beta 活动明显升高。相比之下，CHL 在右中央前和顶枕叶皮质显示出与 alpha 维持相关的活动增加。至关重要的是，右侧额上编码活动和右侧顶枕部维持活动与各组的语言能力相关。这些数据表明，CHL 可能利用右侧半球的代偿性活动来达到 CNH 水平的言语工作记忆功能。这些区域的神经行为可能会在关键发育时期影响语言功能。
