Should I Sign to my Child with a Cochlear Implant?!

Transcription

1 Should I Sign to my Child with a Cochlear Implant? Preliminary Findings from an ERP Investigation Shane Blau, Todd LaMarr, Sharon Coffey Corina, David Corina Cognitive Neurolinguistics Laboratory Center for Mind and Brain University of California, Davis National Science Foundation Grant SBE

2 Who am I and why am I here?

3 Perspectives on Cochlear Implants and Language What is the controversy? What have you seen in the media? What are the concerns about using ASL and English? What are the concerns about using English only?

4 Sensory and Language Experience with Cochlear Implants An implant does not restore normal hearing. Instead, it can give a deaf person a useful representation of sounds in the environment and helps him or her to understand speech (NIDCD, 2013). Around half of all children born deaf are getting cochlear implants. Currently children are getting CIs at around 12 months old. What does this mean for early auditory and language experience?

5 Maladaptive Plasticity Visual activation of auditory cortex reflects maladptive plasticity in cochlear implant users (Sandmann et al., 2012, p. 555). abandoning signing may be considered in order to prevent its possible adverse effects (Kral and Tillein, 2006, p. 102).

6 The Application of Neuroscience Lumosity- a personal trainer for your brain Improving your brain with the science of neuroplasticity Science is a powerful tool but Rarely definitive Often misinterpreted

7 Research Question Does sign language experience affect the auditory response of deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs)? Long Term Goal: To assess how language and sensory experience affect cochlear implant outcomes.

8 Background Outline Neurolinguistics and neuroplasticity Research regarding D/deaf individuals and sign language The current study: Preliminary findings Future steps and implications Goal: To share results and to provide tools for understanding the question of language use in children with CIs and the neurolinguistic research.

9 Cognitive Neurolinguistics What are the systems in the brain that allow us to learn and use language? What does typical language development look like in the brain?

10 Neuroscience Methods fmri, PET imaging: Where is the response? EEG, ERP recording: When is the response?

11 Neuroplasticity The brain s ability to reorganize based on behavior, environment, input. Due to changes in neural pathways. Learning a new skill Recovering after injury Typical development in young children

12 Developmental Plasticity At birth, a baby begins to receive a huge amount of sensory information. As neurons mature, they create connections to make pathways for processing. As we age, weak or unused connections are pruned.

13 Cross-modal plasticity Cross-modal plasticity: the adaptive ability of the brain to reorganize when it does not experience input from one sensory modality. (Bavelier and Neville, 2002) When is it maladaptive? How do we know if changes are from the language experience (signing and/or spoken) or the sensory experience of being deaf?

14 What is the same for signed and spoken language? A lot Underlying neural systems are almost identical MacSweeney et al. (2002); Emmorey, Mehta & Grabowski (2007)

15 What is different? Animal models Visual abilities of deaf cats Improved ability to detect movement in peripheral vision The brain area responsible for this enhanced skill is an area involved in determining where a sound is coming from in hearing cats 30 Input is changed, output is not % 50% 0% 50% 100% 90 Lomber, Meredith & Kral, 2010

16 Unique to D/deaf individuals Deaf people don t have better central vision, but do attend more to peripheral information. We don t see this effect in hearing CODAs, so this is probably a result of being Deaf, not being a native ASL user. Bavelier, Dye and Hauser (2006)

17 Is the auditory response of children decreased or changed from sign language experience?

18 Children ages years who have been using their implants for at least 6 months Experimental groups: Deaf children with CIs in ASL/English programs (12) Deaf children with CIs in spoken English programs (17) Control group: The Current Study Children with typical hearing who do not use sign language (12)

19 Data Collection HSDC Seattle TLC Framingham Mass CSD Fremont CCHAT School Jean Weingarten School

20 Data Collection The technique uses a cap with electrical sensors that can read the naturally-occurring electrical signals from the brain. This allows us to safely record children s brain waves while they are watching a video or listening to sounds. By analyzing the children s patterns of brain activity, we measure the effects of sign language on auditory function.

21 The Stimuli Auditory Oddball : Auditory response to a single speech syllable ( ba ) as compared to a deviant tone consisting of a frequency modulated (FM) sweep. Visual Checkerboard: Visual response to a checkerboard that appears in the background while the child is watching a video in the center of the screen.

22 What are Event-Related Potentials (ERPs)? A type of EEG measurement electroencephalogram Passively recorded from the scalp Can tell us about the integrity/ efficiency of brain responses.

23 Where do electrical potentials come from?.

24 How do ERPs work? Computer records electrical activity time-locked to the stimuli Averaged response over many trials

25 What are we looking for in the ERP waves? Changes in Amplitude Changes in Latency Auditory P1/N2: Early response Could reflect sensory process Could reflect attention Maturational differences Visual C1 Very early sensory response NOT attentional

26 Auditory Results Children ages 4-8 Control (8) English (9) ASL/English (5) = ba sound = oddball sound

27 Visual Results = hearing controls = English only = ASL/English

28 Next Steps In-depth analysis of EEG response Analysis of vocabulary and external factors More subjects (younger ages needed)

29 Language experience in children with CIs A study comparing CI users who were native signers showed that they outperformed non-signers in speech perception, production, and language development. Crossmodal reorganisation of auditory cortex occurs regardless of compensatory strategies, such as sign language, used by the deaf person. In contrast, language deprivation during early sensitive periods has been repeatedly linked to poor language outcomes (Lyness et al. 2013, p. 2621). Hassanzadeh,

30 Bigger Picture Need for rigorous studies to examine language outcomes in deaf children. Can we make better predictions for successful outcome? Will these results predict later language growth? How do these early measures relate to reading? Effects of age of implantation Better understanding of language and brain relationships.

31 Questions? Comments? If you are interested in getting involved, or you would like to know more about our lab s research, please feel free to contact me at: srblau@ucdavis.edu

32 Thank you to VL2 and the National Science Foundation, as well as the wonderful families and schools who are working with us. From our research team at the Cognitive Neurolinguistics Lab NSF Grant SBE

33 References Bavelier, D., Dye, M. G., & Hauser, P. C. (2006). Do deaf individuals see better?. Trends In Cognitive Sciences, 10(11), doi: /j.tics Bavelier, D., & Neville, H. J. (2002). Cross-modal plasticity: where and how?. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3(6), doi: /nrn848 Bosworth RG, Dobkins KR (2002) Visual field asymmetries for motion processing in deaf and hearing signers. Brain and Cognition 49: Cardon, G., Campbell, J., & Sharma, A. (2012). Plasticity in the Developing Auditory Cortex: Evidence from Children with Sensorineural Hearing Loss and Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder. Journal Of The American Academy Of Audiology, 23(6), doi: /jaaa Corina, D. P., Lawyer, L. & Cates, D. (2012). Cross-linguistic differences in the neural representation of human language: evidence from users of signed languages. Frontiers in Psychology, 3(January), 587. doi: /fpsyg Davidson, K., Lillo-Martin, D., Pichler, D. C. (2014). Spoken English language development in native signing children with cochlear implants. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 19(2), Emmory, K., Klima, E., Hickok, G. (1998). Mental rotation within linguistic and non-linguistic domains in users of American Sign Language. Cognition. 68(3): Emmorey, K., & McCullough, S. (2009). The bimodal bilingual brain: Effects of sign language experience. Brain And Language, 109(2-3), doi: /j.bandl Gordon, K. A., Wong, D. E., Valero, J. J., Jewell, S. F., Yoo, P. P., & Papsin, B. C. (2011). Use It or Lose It? Lessons Learned from the Developing Brains of Children Who are Deaf and Use Cochlear Implants to Hear. Brain Topography, 24(3-4, Sp. Iss. SI), Hassanzadeh, S. S. (2012). Outcomes of cochlear implantation in deaf children of deaf parents: comparative study. Journal Of Laryngology And Otology, 126(10),

34 References cont. Kral, A. & Tillein, J. (2006). Brain plasticity under cochlear implant stimulation. Adv. Otorhinolaryngology 64: Lomber, S. G., Meredith, M., & Kral, A. (2010). Cross-modal plasticity in specific auditory cortices underlies visual compensations in the deaf. Nature Neuroscience, 13(11), doi: /nn Lyness, C. R., Woll, B. B., Campbell, R. R., & Cardin, V. V. (2013). How does visual language affect crossmodal plasticity and cochlear implant success?. Neuroscience And Biobehavioral Reviews, 37(10, Part 2), doi: /j.neubiorev MacSweeney, M., Woll, B., Campbell, R., McGuire, P. K., David, A. S., Williams, S. R., &... Brammer, M. J. (2002). Neural systems underlying British Sign Language and audio-visual English processing in native users. Brain: A Journal Of Neurology, 125(7), doi: /brain/awf153 Neville H J et al. PNAS, 1998;95: Neville, H.J. and Bavelier, D. (2000). Specificity and plasticity in neurocognitive development in humans. In Gazzaniga, M.S. (Ed). The New Cognitive Neurosciences. (2nd ed.), Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp Pascual-Leone, A., Amedi, A., Fregni, F., & Merabet, L. B. (2005). The Plastic Human Brain Cortex.Annual Review Of Neuroscience, 28(1), doi: /annurev.neuro Sandmann, P., Dillier, N., Eichele, T., Meyer, M., Kegel, A., Pascual-Marqui, R., Marcar, V. L., Jancke, L., & Debener, S. (2012). Visual activation of auditory cortex reflects maladaptive plasticity in cochlear implant users. Brain: A Journal Of Neurology,135(2),