Predicting the Auditory Language Ability of Young Children With Hearing Loss Using Their Mothers' Brain Activity.

Purpose: Children with congenital hearing loss (HL) have auditory impairments that may place them at increased risk for delays or variability in language development. However, obtaining reliable brain markers for early classification of young children with HL versus those with normal hearing (NH), a...

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Publicado en:Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research Vol. 68; no. 10; pp. 4996 - 5021
Autores principales: Zhai, Yu, Xing, Yajing, Zhao, Jianlong, He, XiangYu, Jiang, Kexin, Zhang, Tengfei, Lu, Chunming
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Oct2025
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: Oct2025
      vid: 68
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      pub: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
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        10.1044/2025_JSLHR-25-00008
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        atl: Predicting the Auditory Language Ability of Young Children With Hearing Loss Using Their Mothers' Brain Activity.
      aug:
        au:
          Zhai, Yu
          Xing, Yajing
          Zhao, Jianlong
          He, XiangYu
          Jiang, Kexin
          Zhang, Tengfei
          Lu, Chunming
        affil:
          State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, China
          China Rehabilitation Research Center for Hearing and Speech Impairment, Beijing
      su:
        Communicative competence
        Mothers
        Age distribution
        Parenting
        Genetic disorders
        Analysis of variance
        Mother-child relationship
        Language acquisition
        Children
        Hearing disorder diagnosis
        Research funding
        Down syndrome
        Maternal age
        Brain
        Near infrared spectroscopy
        Intelligibility of speech
        Conceptual structures
        Biomarkers
      sug:
        subj:
          Communicative competence
          Mothers
          Age distribution
          Parenting
          Genetic disorders
          Analysis of variance
          Mother-child relationship
          Language acquisition
          Children
          Hearing disorder diagnosis
          Research funding
          Down syndrome
          Maternal age
          Brain
          Near infrared spectroscopy
          Intelligibility of speech
          Conceptual structures
          Biomarkers
      ab: Purpose: Children with congenital hearing loss (HL) have auditory impairments that may place them at increased risk for delays or variability in language development. However, obtaining reliable brain markers for early classification of young children with HL versus those with normal hearing (NH), as well as for precise assessment of HL children's language ability, remains a challenge due to limitations in traditional neuroimaging techniques and theoretical frameworks. To address this gap, we propose the maternal mirror hypothesis, which suggests that brain activities of mothers might mirror or indirectly reflect children's auditory language ability, offering an additional and useful approach for obtaining brain markers of HL children in clinical assessment. Method: Children aged 2--5 years with HL (n = 105) and NH (n = 89), along with their mothers, participated in the study. Brain activity in each mother--child dyad was simultaneously measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) while they watched a silent video together. From these data, we derived maternal and child intrapersonal brain functional connectivity (FC), as well as mother--child intersubject correlation (ISC). Children's language comprehension and production ability were assessed at baseline with a follow-up of their changes over 6 months. Results and Conclusions: We found that maternal brain FC or mother--child ISC outperformed child-based FC in predicting HL children's language comprehension and production, as well as their plastic changes across 6 months. Moreover, brain markers predicting HL children's language ability did not differ between groups of HL and NH, whereas those brain markers that classified HL versus NH group status were not correlated with HL children's language ability. This dissociation suggests distinct neural mechanisms underlying HL pathology with brain deficits versus the compensatory mechanisms with the functional recovery of HL children. These findings support the maternal mirror hypothesis, having the potential to address traditional challenges in early functional assessment and prediction of HL children by providing a novel neuroimaging approach and an original theoretical framework.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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