Functional Plasticity in Auditory and Visual Discrimination Processing in Patients with Single-Sided Deafness: An EEG Study.
Trends in hearing January 1, 2026 Qiaoyu Liu, Yufei Qiao, Min Zhu et al.
In people with single-sided deafness (SSD), brain plasticity differs between early sensory processing and later, higher-level stages. Using EEG during auditory and visual oddball tasks, 37 SSD patients showed reduced early auditory brain responses (N1, P2, mismatch negativity) but normal later responses (N2, P3). In vision, they showed enhanced early visual N1 amplitudes but intact later components. Higher-level discrimination in both modalities remained unaffected. This suggests that compensatory plasticity in SSD mainly occurs at early sensory stages, with diminished auditory and heightened visual neural activity, while higher-level processing stays stable. These findings help resolve previous conflicting results and inform rehabilitation strategies.