Is there a critical period for cochlear implantation in congenitally deaf children?
Harrison RV ; Gordon KA ; Mount RJ Auditory Science Laboratory, Department of Otolaryngology, Division of Brain and Behaviour, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto M5G 1X8, Canada. rvh@sickkids.ca A range of basic and applied studies have demonstrated that during the development of the auditory system, early experimental manipulations or clinical interventions are generally more effective than those made later. We present a short review of these studies. We investigated this age-related plasticity in relation to the timing of cochlear implantation in deaf-from-birth children. Cochlear implantation is a standard intervention for providing hearing in children with severe to profound deafness. An important practical question is whether there is a critical period or cutoff age of implantation after which hearing outcomes are significantly reduced. In this article, we present data from prelingually deaf children (mostly congenitally deaf) implanted at ages ranging from 1 to 15 years. Eac
