A recent study done by researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center using data provided by Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging saw how this data in a child with a cochlear implant can predict the development of language skills two years after grafting.
The researchers, in this study published in Brain and Behavior (A semi-supervised Support Vector Machine model for predicting the language outcomes following cochlear implantation based on pre-implant brain fMRI imaging) have discovered high activity in two brain regions in particular, evaluating with functional MRI before and after implantation.
The first region is located in the left superior and middle temporal circumvolution, and promotes speech recognition and language association. The second region includes the right cerebellar structures. The study included 44 children aged 8 months to 5 years old: 21 were control subjects with normal hearing and participated in auditory, language, cognitive and functional MRI tests; 23 were deaf-mute and were evaluated with auditory tests and functional MRI. Two years after surgery, researchers remeasured the latter group's language skills.
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