Topic: cortical map plasticity

Cochlear implants (CI) are neuroprostheses that restore hearing for deaf humans by delivering patterned pulses of current to the auditory nerve, bypassing the damaged sensory epithelium of the inner ear. Almost all CI users require adaptation periods to attain speech comprehension, which improves most rapidly in the first weeks to 6 months following CI activation [1]. In CI studies of deafened animals, training induces cortical map plasticity in primary auditory cortex (A1) of task-relevant stimuli [2, 3]. It remains unclear whether observed CI training-induced cortical plasticity in animal mo