Rosen Merri J, Huyck Julia J
Hearing Research Group, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Northeast Ohio Medical University, Rootstown, OH, USA.
University Hospitals - NEOMED Hearing Research Center, Northeast Ohio Medical University, Rootstown, OH, USA.
Neuropsychopharmacology. 2025 Aug 21. doi: 10.1038/s41386-025-02203-2.
In children, early hearing loss can cause prolonged difficulty with auditory perception and language processing. Yet children with hearing loss are at greater risk of long-term language, cognitive, and socioemotional deficits when raised with environmental challenges that are stressful, such as low socio-economic status. The neural circuits underlying language and auditory processing are shaped by auditory experience over the course of development, allowing listeners to make sense of environmental sounds including speech. Evidence is accumulating from work in animal models that these sensory circuits are also affected by adverse stressful experiences early in life. Recent experiments indicate that stress can exacerbate sensory deficits caused by developmental hearing loss. These effects are driven by shifts in mechanisms underlying developmental plasticity, as well as by consequences of altered activity of the hypothalamic-adrenal-pituitary (HPA) stress axis. Viewed through an interdisciplinary lens, the research reviewed here suggests that some of the challenges experienced by children with hearing loss may be intensified by early life adversity and ameliorated by interventions that target both sensory deprivation and stress.
在儿童中，早期听力损失会导致听觉感知和语言处理方面长期存在困难。然而，当听力损失儿童在诸如社会经济地位低下等有压力的环境挑战中成长时，他们面临长期语言、认知和社会情感缺陷的风险更大。语言和听觉处理的神经回路在发育过程中由听觉经验塑造，使听众能够理解包括语音在内的环境声音。动物模型研究积累的证据表明，这些感觉回路在生命早期也会受到不良应激经历的影响。最近的实验表明，压力会加剧发育性听力损失引起的感觉缺陷。这些影响是由发育可塑性潜在机制的变化以及下丘脑 - 垂体 - 肾上腺（HPA）应激轴活动改变的后果驱动的。从跨学科的角度来看，这里回顾的研究表明，听力损失儿童所经历的一些挑战可能会因早期生活逆境而加剧，而针对感觉剥夺和压力的干预措施则可以改善这些挑战。
