Assessment of Audio-Tactile Sensory Substitution Training in Participants with Profound Deafness Using the Event-Related Potential Technique.

Abstract

This paper examines the application of electroencephalogram-based methods to assess the effects of audio-tactile substitution training in young, profoundly deaf (PD) participants, with the aim of analyzing the neural mechanisms associated with vibrotactile complex sound discrimination. Electrical brain activity reflects dynamic neural changes, and the temporal precision of event-related potentials (ERPs) has proven to be key in studying time-locked processes while performing behavioral tasks that involve attention and working memory. The current protocol was designed to study electrophysiological activity in PD subjects while they performed a continuous performance task (CPT) using complex-sound stimuli, consisting of five different animal sounds delivered through a portable stimulator system worn on the right index finger. As a repeated-measures design, electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings in standard conditions were performed before and after a brief training program (five 1 h sessions over 15 days), followed by offline artifact correction and epoch averaging, to obtain individual and grand-mean waveforms. Behavioral results show a significant improvement in discrimination and a more robust P3-like centroparietal positive waveform for the target stimuli after training. In this protocol, ERPs contribute to the further understanding of learning-related neural changes in PD subjects associated with audio-tactile discrimination of complex sounds.