Few studies have addressed the long-term outcomes of early brain injury, especially after hemorrhagic stroke. This is the first study to report a case of acquired auditory processing disorder in a 10-year-old child who had a severe left hemorrhagic cerebral infarction at 13 months of age, compromising nearly all of the left temporal lobe. This case, therefore, is an excellent and rare opportuni...

The information conveyed by our senses can be combined to facilitate perception and behaviour. One focus of recent research has been on the factors governing such facilitatory multisensory interactions. The spatial register of neuronal receptive fields (RFs) appears to be a prerequisite for multisensory enhancement. In terms of auditory-somatosensory (AS) interactions, facilitatory effects on s...

Several functional brain attributes reflecting neocortical activity have been found to be enhanced in musicians compared to non-musicians. Included are the N1m evoked magnetic field, P2 and right-hemispheric N1c auditory evoked potentials, and the source waveform of the magnetically recorded 40 Hz auditory steady state response (SSR). We investigated whether these functional brain attributes me...

The classic estrogen 17 -estradiol (E2) was recently identified as a novel modulator of hearing function. It is produced rapidly, in an experience-dependent fashion, by auditory cortical neurons of both males and females. This brain-generated E2 enhances the efficiency of auditory coding and improves the neural and behavioral discrimination of auditory cues. Remarkably, the effects of E2 are lo...

Three children with auditory neuropathy are described. Two were detected via a targeted neonatal hearing screening programme based on auditory brain stem response testing, and one via the routine Health Visitor Distraction Test. Auditory neuropathy is an important but poorly understood disorder which has implications on planning future hearing screening policy and management of hearing impairment.

Sound entering our ears undergoes many transformations throughout the auditory pathway until it is perceived in the auditory cortex. The first processing stage is the auditory periphery, where pressure changes are converted to electrical potentials which are conducted by auditory nerve fibers (ANFs) to the central nervous system. ANFs converge onto several types of neurons in the cochlear nucle...

Auditory brain stem circuits rely on fast, precise, and reliable neurotransmission to process auditory information. To determine the fundamental role of myelination in auditory brain stem function, we examined the evoked auditory brain stem response (ABR) from the Long Evans shaker (LES) rat, which lacks myelin due to a genetic deletion of myelin basic protein. In control rats, the ABR evoked b...