OBJECTIVE: To investigate the law of auditory remodeling by studying the Cortical Auditory Evoked Potential in a group of post-lingually deaf adults in the early stage of the cochlear implant use. METHOD: Ten post-lingually deaf adults implanted with PULSAR ci 100 of Medel device ranged from 19 to 52 years old with duration of deafness from 3 months to 23 years.were involved. Their P1-N1-P2 responses to /ba/ at around 60-70 dB SPi and open-set speech recognition scores of mono-syllabic words were recorded at 1. 3 and 6 months after the switch-on of cochlear implants. RESULT: Six out of 10 typical waveforms of Pl-N1-P2 were obtained. The other I were with atypical waveforms. The group with atypical waveform was characterized by long duration and early onset of deafness. There was no significant difference regarding either the amplitude or the latency of each peak at the 3 data collection time points. There was significant difference among the 3 data collection time points about the speech recognition scores with the highest score at the 6th month of switch on. There was no significant correlation between the peak of the CAEP and speech recognition score. CONCLUSION In the first 6 months of cochlear implant use in the post-lingually deaf adults, the duration and the onset age of deafness played important role in respect of the presence and waveform morphology of the CAEPs. It needs at least 6 months for the central auditory system to make use of the audio input from the cochlear implant.
Adult ; Cochlear Implantation ; Cochlear Implants ; Evoked Potentials, Auditory ; Female ; Hearing Loss, Sensorineural ; physiopathology ; rehabilitation ; Humans ; Middle Aged ; Treatment Outcome ; Young Adult