ABSTRACT

Early sensory deprivation in visual or auditory modality involves a process of neural reorganization through a process of unimodal or multimodal restorative plasticity. Unimodal plasticity refers to the process by which the brain areas serving the impaired sensory modality may develop the ability to process perceptual inputs from one or more of the intact sensory systems. The process can be characterized by enhancing the activity of intact sensory areas or by a changing the pattern of connectivity between different sensory modalities. Reorganization varies across neural systems and according to the nature and time of occurrence of altered experience. Application of cochlear implants to pre-verbally deaf children can significantly improve their language development. Congenital or preverbal deafness (PVD) is defined as the hearing loss that is present at birth and, consequently, before speech development. The success is, however, age-dependent, with early implanted children reaching a normal language processing ability.