Effect of cochlear implant side on early speech processing in adults with single-sided deafness.

In binaurally deaf subjects, speech processing particularly benefits from a cochlear implant (CI) in the right ear, which is contralateral to the commonly left speech-dominant hemisphere. However, it is unclear whether such effects of implantation side also occur in speech processing in patients with single-sided deafness (SSD). Lateralization of N1 responses was analyzed with a high-density electroencephalogram (EEG) in fourteen adults with postlingually acquired left or right SSD who received a CI in adulthood. During recording, patients performed a speech and a pure-tone discrimination task. Lateralization of N1 responses was assessed by side-specific global field power (GFP) and compared (a) between normal hearing and CI-implanted ears within subjects and (b) between implantation sides across subjects. N1 responses were stronger in the contralateral than in the ipsilateral hemisphere during stimulation of the normal hearing ear (except for left speech stimulation), and was bilateral symmetric with CI stimulation on either side. A significant correlation between speech discrimination performance and left lateralization was found across subjects for the left CI ear. CI stimulation altered auditory processing across hemispheres. Speech discrimination in left CI-implanted SSD patients improved with left lateralization of the N1 response. Side-specific rehabilitation in SSD patients might improve speech processing across hemispheres.

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Copyright © 2022 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. B.S. received travel expenses from Cochlear Deutschland GmbH & Co. KG outside of the submitted work.