Young brains compensate for deafness more than older ones

Our brains can adapt to losing sight or hearing, and the change is much more profound in younger people, brain scans are revealing.

People who lose their sight or hearing often develop greater ability in their other senses, as part of the brain's way to compensate for the sensory loss. Even in children born deaf or blind, the brain has an astonishing capacity to enhance the senses that remain.

Over the last few years, there has been a shift in the focus of research into hearing loss - from concentrating on hearing loss suffered from birth, to looking more at age-related hearing problems.
Better understanding of this effect, known by researchers as cross-modal plasticity, could help to find more effective ways to help people who have severe problems with vision or hearing. It could also make clear how it should be managed, if it has the potential to cause problems later in life.

'It appears that the reorganisation in the brain is much more important in early deaf people,' said Olivier Collignon, associate professor at the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences at the University of Trento in Italy and research associate at the National Fund for Scientific Research in Belgium.

'And it is qualitatively different to those who may lose their hearing later in life,' said Prof. Collignon, coordinator of the EU-funded CP-FunMoD project, which is using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scanners to study the differences in brain plasticity of people who have been deaf from an early age, compared to those who lose their hearing later in life.

The project has the long-term aim of improving our understanding of when clinical interventions such as cochlear implants can offer the best prospects of helping deaf people to hear.
'It is about understanding how the brain reorganises when hearing is lost, and how the parts normally involved in processing hearing, process another sense, like vision,' said Dr Jodie Davies-Thompson, who is also from the University of Trento and has an EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant to study cross-modal plasticity in deaf people as part of the project.

Read on on Horizon Magazine

More information:
editorial [at] horizon [dash] magazine [dot] eu
Horizon brings you the latest news and features about thought-provoking science and innovative research projects funded by the EU. Our articles are written by independent science journalists and are designed to appeal to both scientists and non-scientists alike.

Provided by Horizon: The EU Research & Innovation Magazine