Topic: neonatally deafened rats

Early deafened patients with bilateral cochlear implants (biCI) often show impaired spatial hearing, particularly due to reduced sensitivity to interaural time differences (ITDs). Recent research of our groups has shown that neonatally deafened rats, supplied with biCI in young adulthood, can effectively learn to use ITDs for sound localization if the animals received informative pulse timing (pt) ITDs from the onset of stimulation. Here we investigate whether the hearing-inexperienced auditory system can develop good ITD sensitivity when ptITDs are jittered from onset of electric stimulation.

Spatial hearing, as a fundamental aspect of auditory perception, plays a central role in our daily interactions with the auditory environment. The ability to localize sound and navigate through our environment relies primarily on two binaural cues: interaural time differences (ITDs) and interaural level differences (ILDs). However, for patients with bilateral cochlear implants (biCI), sound localization is a major challenge and ITD sensitivity is particularly poor, with most biCI patients relying almost exclusively on ILDs. Nevertheless, our recent work demonstrates that neonatally deafened ra