To the Brain and Back: The Role of Visual Neuroplasticity in Cochlear Implant Users’ Speech Outcomes

Cochlear implants (CIs) can restore hearing function from deafness or profound hearing loss, but CI recipients’ long-term speech outcomes can vary widely. Some recover speech perception rapidly and show good listening performance in noisy environments. Others may rehabilitate slowly, struggle with simple words in quiet, or even fail to recover functional speech perception. Research has shown that several factors, such as the cause or duration of deafness, the amount of residual hearing, or whether deafness occurred before or after developing language, correlate with CI users’ long-term speech perception ability. However, much variation in CI users’ speech perception remains unexplained.