The benefit of cochlear implantation crucially depends on the ability of the brain to learn to classify neural activity evoked by the cochlear implant. Brain plasticity is a complex property with massive developmental changes after birth. The present paper reviews the experimental work on auditory plasticity and focuses on the plasticity required for adaptation to cochlear implant stimulation. ...

Modern cochlear implantation technologies allow deaf patients to understand auditory speech; however, the implants deliver only a coarse auditory input and patients must use long-term adaptive processes to achieve coherent percepts. In adults with post-lingual deafness, the high progress of speech recovery is observed during the first year after cochlear implantation, but there is a large range...

OBJECTIVE The behavioral binaural masking level difference (BMLD) is believed to reflect brain stem processing. However, this conflicts with transient auditory evoked potential research that indicates the auditory brain stem and middle latency responses do not demonstrate the BMLD. The objective of the present study is to investigate the brain stem and cortical mechanisms underlying the BMLD in...

Auditory brain stem responses to both acoustic (auditory brain stem response [ABR]) and electrical (electrically evoked auditory brain stem response [EABR]) stimuli, as well as the frequency-specific compound action potential (CAP), were recorded before and periodically following continuous intracochlear DC stimulation (2, 7, and 12 microA) for 2 hours in normal-hearing guinea pigs, by means of...

The auditory brain stem response to speech mimics the acoustic characteristics of the speech signal with remarkable fidelity. This makes it possible to derive from it considerable theoretical and clinically applicable information relevant to auditory processing of complex stimuli. Years of research have led to the current characterization of these neural events with respect to the underlying ac...

Auditory symptoms of brain stem disorder depend on the nature of the lesion. This study compared auditory test results in 28 patients with extra-axial, 11 patients with intra-axial, and 6 patients with combined extra-axial and intra-axial brain stem disorders. Patients with extra-axial lesions usually demonstrated (1) sensitivity loss, (2) marked adaptation on Békésy audiometry, (3) impairment ...

There is a lack of physiological data pertaining to how listening humans process auditory information. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has provided some data for the auditory cortex in awake humans, but there is still a paucity of comparable data for subcortical auditory areas where the early stages of processing take place, as amply demonstrated by single-unit studies in animals. ...

Sensorineural hearing loss is the most common sensory disorder in humans. It is primarily due to the degeneration of highly specialised mechanosensory cells in the cochlea, the so-called hair cells. Hearing problems can also be caused or further aggravated by the death of auditory sensory neurons that convey the information from the hair cells to the brain stem. Despite the discovery of stem/pr...

Auditory brainstem implants (ABIs) are currently indicated for patients with neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF-2) tumors involving both vestibulocochlear nerves. The ABI helps bypass the damaged cochlear nerves and stimulates the cochlear nucleus in the brainstem directly thereby restoring auditory sensation. The implant is usually placed in the lateral recess of the fourth ventricle after tumor res...