IUBio

role of thalamus in intellectual development

Didier A. Depireux didier at Glue.umd.edu
Wed May 26 08:17:35 EST 1999


Dave L (dave at lud-low.freeserve.co.uk) wrote:
: There is a sensori-neural hearing loss - severe at high frequencies,
: slight to moderate elsewhere. Wears hearing aids but is intolerant of
: them outside school. 

That I find curious. The cochlea can get damaged because of infections, and
some antibiotics selectively destroy the outer hair cells for the high
frequencies. But if her damage is only thalamic, how could that arise? The
only part of the auditory thalamus (the medial geniculate body) that is
tonotopic is the ventral part; if her hearing loss is due to thalamic
damage, it would have to be a very localized damage!  But then her hearing
aids would help only through recruitment, which I doubt would be that
helpful if her lower frequency hearing is OK... So she had some cochlear
damage among all her misfortunes? Was it medication or anoxia induced?

						Didier

--
Didier A Depireux                              didier at isr.umd.edu
Neural Systems Lab                 http://www.isr.umd.edu/~didier
Institute for Systems Research          Phone: 301-405-6557 (off)
University of Maryland                                -6596 (lab)
College Park MD 20742 USA                     Fax: 1-301-314-9920



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