Study identifies neurons that can improve sound perception, which could explain the variation in performance in people with cochlear devices.
Some people with cochlear implants can recognize speech within hours of the device being implanted, but for others it can take months or years.Stimulating neurons that are linked to alertness helps rats with cochlear implants learn to quickly recognize tunes, researchers have found. The results suggest that activity in a brain region called the locus coeruleus improves hearing perception in deaf rodents.
Researchers say that a person’s age, the duration of their hearing loss and the type of processor and electrodes in the implant don’t account for this variation, but suggest that the brain could be the source of the differences. “It’s sort of the black box,” says Daniel Polley, an otolaryngologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. Most previous research has focused on improving the cochlear device and the implantation procedure.
Although the LC is not part of the auditory system, it supplies the system with the neurotransmitter noradrenaline, which boosts alertness; the LC also has a role in cognition, learning and memory, and attention. When the LC releases noradrenaline throughout the auditory system and the brain’s learning and attention circuits, this accelerates the learning and processing of auditory signals.
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