Review article: structural brain alterations in prelingually deaf

Hribar, Manja (author), Šuput, Dušan (author), Battelino, Saba (author), Vovk, Andrej (author)

Functional studies show that our brain has a remarkable ability to reorganize itself in the absence of one or more sensory modalities. In this review, we gathered all the available articles investigating structural alterations in congenitally deaf subjects. Some concentrated only on specific regions of interest (e.g., auditory areas), while others examined the whole brain. The majority of structural alterations were observed in the auditory white matter and were more pronounced in the right hemisphere. A decreased white matter volume or fractional anisotropy in the auditory areas were the most common findings in congenitally deaf subjects. Only a few studies observed alterations in the auditory grey matter. Preservation of the grey matter might be due to the cross-modal plasticity as well as due to the lack of sensitivity of methods used for microstructural alterations of grey matter. Structural alterations were also observed in the frontal, visual, and other cerebral regions as well as in the cerebellum. The observed structural brain alterations in the deaf can probably be attributed mainly to the cross-modal plasticity in the absence of sound input and use of sign instead of spoken language.

• Language: English
• Keywords: brain, prelingually deafness, structure, plasticity, hearing loss
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.02 - Review Article
• Organization: MF - Faculty of Medicine
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2020
• Number of pages: 22 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 220, art. 117042
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-144724
• UDC: 616.8
• ISSN on article: 1095-9572
• DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117042
• COBISS.SI-ID: 23619331
• Publication date in RUL: 09.03.2023

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: NeuroImage
• Shortened title: NeuroImage
• Publisher: Elsevier
• ISSN: 1095-9572
• COBISS.SI-ID: 520131353

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: možgani, gluhost, struktura