Continuous tracking of effort and confidence while listening to speech-in-noise in young and older adults.

Reporting discomfort when noise affects listening experience suggests that listeners may be aware, at least to some extent, of adverse environmental conditions and their impact on listening experience. This involves monitoring internal states (effort and confidence). Here we quantified continuous self-report indices that track one's own internal states and investigated age-related differences in this ability. We instructed two groups of young and older adults to continuously report their confidence and effort while listening to stories in fluctuating noise. Using cross-correlation analyses between the time series of fluctuating noise and those of perceived effort or confidence, we showed that (1) participants modified their assessment of effort and confidence based on variations in the noise, with a 4 s lag; (2) there were no differences between the groups. These findings imply extending this method to other areas, expanding the definition of metacognition, and highlighting the value of this ability for older adults.

Crossmodal plasticity following short-term monocular deprivation.

A brief period of monocular deprivation (MD) induces short-term plasticity of the adult visual system. Whether MD elicits neural changes beyond visual processing is yet unclear. Here, we assessed the specific impact of MD on neural correlates of multisensory processes. Neural oscillations associated with visual and audio-visual processing were measured for both the deprived and the non-deprived eye. Results revealed that MD changed neural activities associated with visual and multisensory processes in an eye-specific manner. Selectively for the deprived eye, alpha synchronization was reduced within the first 150 ms of visual processing. Conversely, gamma activity was enhanced in response to audio-visual events only for the non-deprived eye within 100-300 ms after stimulus onset. The analysis of gamma responses to unisensory auditory events revealed that MD elicited a crossmodal upweight for the non-deprived eye. Distributed source modeling suggested that the right parietal cortex played a major role in neural effects induced by MD. Finally, visual and audio-visual processing alterations emerged for the induced component of the neural oscillations, indicating a prominent role of feedback connectivity. Results reveal the causal impact of MD on both unisensory (visual and auditory) and multisensory (audio-visual) processes and, their frequency-specific profiles. These findings support a model in which MD increases excitability to visual events for the deprived eye and audio-visual and auditory input for the non-deprived eye.

The development of oscillatory and aperiodic resting state activity is linked to a sensitive period in humans.

Congenital blindness leads to profound changes in electroencephalographic (EEG) resting state activity. A well-known consequence of congenital blindness in humans is the reduction of alpha activity which seems to go together with increased gamma activity during rest. These results have been interpreted as indicating a higher excitatory/inhibitory (E/I) ratio in visual cortex compared to normally sighted controls. Yet it is unknown whether the spectral profile of EEG during rest would recover if sight were restored. To test this question, the present study evaluated periodic and aperiodic components of the EEG resting state power spectrum. Previous research has linked the aperiodic components, which exhibit a power-law distribution and are operationalized as a linear fit of the spectrum in log-log space, to cortical E/I ratio. Moreover, by correcting for the aperiodic components from the power spectrum, a more valid estimate of the periodic activity is possible. Here we analyzed resting state EEG activity from two studies involving (1) 27 permanently congenitally blind adults (CB) and 27 age-matched normally sighted controls (MCB); (2) 38 individuals with reversed blindness due to bilateral, dense, congenital cataracts (CC) and 77 age-matched sighted controls (MCC). Based on a data driven approach, aperiodic components of the spectra were extracted for the low frequency (Lf-Slope 1.5 to 19.5 Hz) and high frequency (Hf-Slope 20 to 45 Hz) range. The Lf-Slope of the aperiodic component was significantly steeper (more negative slope), and the Hf-Slope of the aperiodic component was significantly flatter (less negative slope) in CB and CC participants compared to the typically sighted controls. Alpha power was significantly reduced, and gamma power was higher in the CB and the CC groups. These results suggest a sensitive period for the typical development of the spectral profile during rest and thus likely an irreversible change in the E/I ratio in visual cortex due to congenital blindness. We speculate that these changes are a consequence of impaired inhibitory circuits and imbalanced feedforward and feedback processing in early visual areas of individuals with a history of congenital blindness.

Developmental experiences alter the temporal processing characteristics of the visual cortex: Evidence from deaf and hearing native signers.

To date, the extent to which early experience shapes the functional characteristics of neural circuits is still a matter of debate. In the present study, we tested whether congenital deafness and/or the acquisition of a sign language alter the temporal processing characteristics of the visual system. Moreover, we investigated whether, assuming cross-modal plasticity in deaf individuals, the temporal processing characteristics of possibly reorganised auditory areas resemble those of the visual cortex. Steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) were recorded in congenitally deaf native signers, hearing native signers, and hearing nonsigners. The luminance of the visual stimuli was periodically modulated at 12, 21, and 40 Hz. For hearing nonsigners, the optimal driving rate was 12 Hz. By contrast, for the group of hearing signers, the optimal driving rate was 12 and 21 Hz, whereas for the group of deaf signers, the optimal driving rate was 21 Hz. We did not observe evidence for cross-modal recruitment of auditory cortex in the group of deaf signers. These results suggest a higher preferred neural processing rate as a consequence of the acquisition of a sign language.

EEG frequency-tagging demonstrates increased left hemispheric involvement and crossmodal plasticity for face processing in congenitally deaf signers.

In humans, face-processing relies on a network of brain regions predominantly in the right occipito-temporal cortex. We tested congenitally deaf (CD) signers and matched hearing controls (HC) to investigate the experience dependence of the cortical organization of face processing. Specifically, we used EEG frequency-tagging to evaluate: (1) Face-Object Categorization, (2) Emotional Facial-Expression Discrimination and (3) Individual Face Discrimination. The EEG was recorded to visual stimuli presented at a rate of 6 Hz, with oddball stimuli at a rate of 1.2 Hz. In all three experiments and in both groups, significant face discriminative responses were found. Face-Object categorization was associated to a relative increased involvement of the left hemisphere in CD individuals compared to HC individuals. A similar trend was observed for Emotional Facial-Expression discrimination but not for Individual Face Discrimination. Source reconstruction suggested a greater activation of the auditory cortices in the CD group for Individual Face Discrimination. These findings suggest that the experience dependence of the relative contribution of the two hemispheres as well as crossmodal plasticity vary with different aspects of face processing.

A Protracted Sensitive Period Regulates the Development of Cross-Modal Sound-Shape Associations in Humans.

Humans preferentially match arbitrary words containing higher- and lower-frequency phonemes to angular and smooth shapes, respectively. Here, we investigated the role of visual experience in the development of audiovisual and audiohaptic sound-shape associations (SSAs) using a unique set of five groups: individuals who had suffered a transient period of congenital blindness through congenital bilateral dense cataracts before undergoing cataract-reversal surgeries (CC group), individuals with a history of developmental cataracts (DC group), individuals with congenital permanent blindness (CB group), individuals with late permanent blindness (LB group), and controls with typical sight (TS group). Whereas the TS and LB groups showed highly robust SSAs, the CB, CC, and DC groups did not-in any of the modality combinations tested. These results provide evidence for a protracted sensitive period during which aberrant vision prevents SSA acquisition. Moreover, the finding of a systematic SSA in the LB group demonstrates that representations acquired during the sensitive period are resilient to loss despite dramatically changed experience.

Motion processing after sight restoration: No competition between visual recovery and auditory compensation.

The present study tested whether or not functional adaptations following congenital blindness are maintained in humans after sight-restoration and whether they interfere with visual recovery. In permanently congenital blind individuals both intramodal plasticity (e.g. changes in auditory cortex) as well as crossmodal plasticity (e.g. an activation of visual cortex by auditory stimuli) have been observed. Both phenomena were hypothesized to contribute to improved auditory functions. For example, it has been shown that early permanently blind individuals outperform sighted controls in auditory motion processing and that auditory motion stimuli elicit activity in typical visual motion areas. Yet it is unknown what happens to these behavioral adaptations and cortical reorganizations when sight is restored, that is, whether compensatory auditory changes are lost and to which degree visual motion processing is reinstalled. Here we employed a combined behavioral-electrophysiological approach in a group of sight-recovery individuals with a history of a transient phase of congenital blindness lasting for several months to several years. They, as well as two control groups, one with visual impairments, one normally sighted, were tested in a visual and an auditory motion discrimination experiment. Task difficulty was manipulated by varying the visual motion coherence and the signal to noise ratio, respectively. The congenital cataract-reversal individuals showed lower performance in the visual global motion task than both control groups. At the same time, they outperformed both control groups in auditory motion processing suggesting that at least some compensatory behavioral adaptation as a consequence of a complete blindness from birth was maintained. Alpha oscillatory activity during the visual task was significantly lower in congenital cataract reversal individuals and they did not show ERPs modulated by visual motion coherence as observed in both control groups. In contrast, beta oscillatory activity in the auditory task, which varied as a function of SNR in all groups, was overall enhanced in congenital cataract reversal individuals. These results suggest that intramodal plasticity elicited by a transient phase of blindness was maintained and might mediate the prevailing auditory processing advantages in congenital cataract reversal individuals. By contrast, auditory and visual motion processing do not seem to compete for the same neural resources. We speculate that incomplete visual recovery is due to impaired neural network turning which seems to depend on early visual input. The present results demonstrate a privilege of the first arriving input for shaping neural circuits mediating both auditory and visual functions.

Evidence of a retinotopic organization of early visual cortex but impaired extrastriate processing in sight recovery individuals.

Numerous studies in visually deprived nonhuman animals have demonstrated sensitive periods for the functional development of the early visual cortex. However, in humans it is yet unknown which visual areas are shaped to which degree based on visual experience. The present study investigated the functional organization and processing capacities of early visual cortex in sight recovery individuals with either a history of congenital cataracts (CC) or late onset cataracts (developmental cataracts, DC). Visual event-related potentials (VERPs) were recorded to grating stimuli which were flashed in one of the four quadrants of the visual field. Participants had to detect rarely occurring grating orientations. The CC individuals showed the expected polarity reversal of the C1 wave between upper and lower visual field stimuli at the typical latency range. Since the C1 has been proposed to originate in the early retinotopic visual cortex, we concluded that one basic feature of the retinotopic organization, upper versus lower visual field organization, is spared in CC individuals. Group differences in the size and topography of the C1 effect, however, suggested a less precise functional tuning. The P1 wave, which has been associated with extrastriate visual cortex processing, was significantly attenuated in CC but not in DC individuals compared to typically sighted controls. The present study thus provides evidence for fundamental aspects of retinotopic processing in humans being independent of developmental vision. We suggest that visual impairments in sight recovery individuals may predominantly arise at higher cortical processing stages.

Sensitive periods for the functional specialization of the neural system for human face processing.

The aim of the study was to identify possible sensitive phases in the development of the processing system for human faces. We tested the neural processing of faces in 11 humans who had been blind from birth and had undergone cataract surgery between 2 mo and 14 y of age. Pictures of faces and houses, scrambled versions of these pictures, and pictures of butterflies were presented while event-related potentials were recorded. Participants had to respond to the pictures of butterflies (targets) only. All participants, even those who had been blind from birth for several years, were able to categorize the pictures and to detect the targets. In healthy controls and in a group of visually impaired individuals with a history of developmental or incomplete congenital cataracts, the well-known enhancement of the N170 (negative peak around 170 ms) event-related potential to faces emerged, but a face-sensitive response was not observed in humans with a history of congenital dense cataracts. By contrast, this group showed a similar N170 response to all visual stimuli, which was indistinguishable from the N170 response to faces in the controls. The face-sensitive N170 response has been associated with the structural encoding of faces. Therefore, these data provide evidence for the hypothesis that the functional differentiation of category-specific neural representations in humans, presumably involving the elaboration of inhibitory circuits, is dependent on experience and linked to a sensitive period. Such functional specialization of neural systems seems necessary to archive high processing proficiency.

Visual change detection recruits auditory cortices in early deafness.

Although cross-modal recruitment of early sensory areas in deafness and blindness is well established, the constraints and limits of these plastic changes remain to be understood. In the case of human deafness, for instance, it is known that visual, tactile or visuo-tactile stimuli can elicit a response within the auditory cortices. Nonetheless, both the timing of these evoked responses and the functional contribution of cross-modally recruited areas remain to be ascertained. In the present study, we examined to what extent auditory cortices of deaf humans participate in high-order visual processes, such as visual change detection. By measuring visual ERPs, in particular the visual MisMatch Negativity (vMMN), and performing source localization, we show that individuals with early deafness (N=12) recruit the auditory cortices when a change in motion direction during shape deformation occurs in a continuous visual motion stream. Remarkably this "auditory" response for visual events emerged with the same timing as the visual MMN in hearing controls (N=12), between 150 and 300 ms after the visual change. Furthermore, the recruitment of auditory cortices for visual change detection in early deaf was paired with a reduction of response within the visual system, indicating a shift from visual to auditory cortices of part of the computational process. The present study suggests that the deafened auditory cortices participate at extracting and storing the visual information and at comparing on-line the upcoming visual events, thus indicating that cross-modally recruited auditory cortices can reach this level of computation.

ERP correlates of German Sign Language processing in deaf native signers.

BACKGROUND: The present study investigated the neural correlates of sign language processing of Deaf people who had learned German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache, DGS) from their Deaf parents as their first language. Correct and incorrect signed sentences were presented sign by sign on a computer screen. At the end of each sentence the participants had to judge whether or not the sentence was an appropriate DGS sentence. Two types of violations were introduced: (1) semantically incorrect sentences containing a selectional restriction violation (implausible object); (2) morphosyntactically incorrect sentences containing a verb that was incorrectly inflected (i.e., incorrect direction of movement). Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 74 scalp electrodes. RESULTS: Semantic violations (implausible signs) elicited an N400 effect followed by a positivity. Sentences with a morphosyntactic violation (verb agreement violation) elicited a negativity followed by a broad centro-parietal positivity. CONCLUSIONS: ERP correlates of semantic and morphosyntactic aspects of DGS clearly differed from each other and showed a number of similarities with those observed in other signed and oral languages. These data suggest a similar functional organization of signed and oral languages despite the visual-spacial modality of sign language.

Brain encoding of naturalistic, continuous, and unpredictable tactile events.

Studies employing EEG to measure somatosensory responses have been typically optimized to compute event-related potentials in response to discrete events (ERPs). However, tactile interactions involve continuous processing of non-stationary inputs that change in location, duration, and intensity. To fill this gap, this study aims to demonstrate the possibility of measuring the neural tracking of continuous and unpredictable tactile information. Twenty-seven young adults (females = 15) were continuously and passively stimulated with a random series of gentle brushes on single fingers of each hand, which were covered from view. Thus, tactile stimulations were unique for each participant, and stimulated fingers. An encoding model measured the degree of synchronization between brain activity and continuous tactile input, generating a temporal response function (TRF). Brain topographies associated with the encoding of each finger stimulation showed a contralateral response at central sensors starting at 50 ms and peaking at about 140 ms of lag, followed by a bilateral response at about 240 ms. A series of analyses highlighted that reliable tactile TRF emerged after just 3 minutes of stimulation. Strikingly, topographical patterns of the TRF allowed discriminating digit lateralization across hands and digit representation within each hand. Our results demonstrated for the first time the possibility of using EEG to measure the neural tracking of a naturalistic, continuous, and unpredictable stimulation in the somatosensory domain. Crucially, this approach allows the study of brain activity following individualized, idiosyncratic tactile events to the fingers.Significant Statement This study expands the current research conducted on neural tracking, opening the exploration of idiosyncratic tactile events and overcoming constraints of laboratory tasks that typically rely on discrete events. We validated a protocol for the ecological investigations of continuous, slow, tactile processing of the hands. The employed approach enriches the possible use of the EEG to characterize somatosensory neural representations of tactile events. Findings unravel coherent neural responses to continuous and naturalistic touch, with sensitivity for digit lateralization and representation.

Early assessment of communicative competence in children with hearing loss using the Child-Caregiver Communication Assessment through Rebesco's Evaluation (CC-CARE) method.

PURPOSE: This work presents a new frame-by-frame video analysis method called Child-Caregiver Communication Assessment through Rebesco's Evaluation (CC-CARE), developed in the context of pediatric hearing loss as a rehabilitation tool for assessing children's early communication skills. CC-CARE stems from the commonly used Tait video analysis and extends it by including a new set of parameters aimed at disentangling between hearing-dependent and hearing-independent aspects of communication. METHOD: In this paper, we collected video samples of child-caregiver interactions in a group of 65 normal-hearing children and a group of 165 hearing-impaired children. For each group, we present the CC-CARE method and describe the parameters, their score distributions, correlations and we estimate the adherence of the CC-CARE scores with children's developmental trajectory. Moreover, we compare the results of CC-CARE scores between the two groups having had different development of the auditory system. Finally, a fully-data driven approach was employed to assess the consistency of the communicative efficacy index (CEI), a score aiming to capture a global result of the CC-CARE procedure. RESULTS: Correlations among parameter scores were found in each within-group analysis, revealing CC-CARE's internal consistency in measuring associated but nonoverlapping communication dimensions. For both groups, CC-CARE scores were associated with participants' age. Differences between scores emerged for a between-group analysis, indicating CC-CARE sensitivity to extract communication differences as a function of the hearing status. For both groups, the data analysis revealed that the CEI captures large variance portions across all parameter scores of the CC-CARE method. CONCLUSIONS: Results provide the first evidence that the CC-CARE video analysis method could be a reliable tool capable of highlighting the cascading effects of hearing impairment on children's preverbal communicative efficacy. The CC-CARE method aims to support early rehabilitation of hearing loss by describing a child's communicative efficacy.

Sound suppresses earliest visual cortical processing after sight recovery in congenitally blind humans.

Neuroscientific research has consistently shown more extensive non-visual activity in the visual cortex of congenitally blind humans compared to sighted controls; a phenomenon known as crossmodal plasticity. Whether or not crossmodal activation of the visual cortex retracts if sight can be restored is still unknown. The present study, involving a rare group of sight-recovery individuals who were born pattern vision blind, employed visual event-related potentials to investigate persisting crossmodal modulation of the initial visual cortical processing stages. Here we report that the earliest, stimulus-driven retinotopic visual cortical activity (<100 ms) was suppressed in a spatially specific manner in sight-recovery individuals when concomitant sounds accompanied visual stimulation. In contrast, sounds did not modulate the earliest visual cortical response in two groups of typically sighted controls, nor in a third control group of sight-recovery individuals who had suffered a transient phase of later (rather than congenital) visual impairment. These results provide strong evidence for persisting crossmodal activity in the visual cortex after sight recovery following a period of congenital visual deprivation. Based on the time course of this modulation, we speculate on a role of exuberant crossmodal thalamic input which may arise during a sensitive phase of brain development.

Dissecting abstract, modality-specific and experience-dependent coding of affect in the human brain.

Emotion and perception are tightly intertwined, as affective experiences often arise from the appraisal of sensory information. Nonetheless, whether the brain encodes emotional instances using a sensory-specific code or in a more abstract manner is unclear. Here, we answer this question by measuring the association between emotion ratings collected during a unisensory or multisensory presentation of a full-length movie and brain activity recorded in typically developed, congenitally blind and congenitally deaf participants. Emotional instances are encoded in a vast network encompassing sensory, prefrontal, and temporal cortices. Within this network, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex stores a categorical representation of emotion independent of modality and previous sensory experience, and the posterior superior temporal cortex maps the valence dimension using an abstract code. Sensory experience more than modality affects how the brain organizes emotional information outside supramodal regions, suggesting the existence of a scaffold for the representation of emotional states where sensory inputs during development shape its functioning.

Distinguishing Fine Structure and Summary Representation of Sound Textures from Neural Activity.

The auditory system relies on both local and summary representations; acoustic local features exceeding system constraints are compacted into a set of summary statistics. Such compression is pivotal for sound-object recognition. Here, we assessed whether computations subtending local and statistical representations of sounds could be distinguished at the neural level. A computational auditory model was employed to extract auditory statistics from natural sound textures (i.e., fire, rain) and to generate synthetic exemplars where local and statistical properties were controlled. Twenty-four human participants were passively exposed to auditory streams while the electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. Each stream could consist of short, medium, or long sounds to vary the amount of acoustic information. Short and long sounds were expected to engage local or summary statistics representations, respectively. Data revealed a clear dissociation. Compared with summary-based ones, auditory-evoked responses based on local information were selectively greater in magnitude in short sounds. Opposite patterns emerged for longer sounds. Neural oscillations revealed that local features and summary statistics rely on neural activity occurring at different temporal scales, faster (beta) or slower (theta-alpha). These dissociations emerged automatically without explicit engagement in a discrimination task. Overall, this study demonstrates that the auditory system developed distinct coding mechanisms to discriminate changes in the acoustic environment based on fine structure and summary representations.

Altered neural oscillations underlying visuospatial processing in cerebral visual impairment.

Visuospatial processing deficits are commonly observed in individuals with cerebral visual impairment, even in cases where visual acuity and visual field functions are intact. Cerebral visual impairment is a brain-based visual disorder associated with the maldevelopment of central visual pathways and structures. However, the neurophysiological basis underlying higher-order perceptual impairments in this condition has not been clearly identified, which in turn poses limits on developing rehabilitative interventions. Using combined eye tracking and EEG recordings, we assessed the profile and performance of visual search on a naturalistic virtual reality-based task. Participants with cerebral visual impairment and controls with neurotypical development were instructed to search, locate and fixate on a specific target placed among surrounding distractors at two levels of task difficulty. We analysed evoked (phase-locked) and induced (non-phase-locked) components of broadband (4-55 Hz) neural oscillations to uncover the neurophysiological basis of visuospatial processing. We found that visual search performance in cerebral visual impairment was impaired compared to controls (as indexed by outcomes of success rate, reaction time and gaze error). Analysis of neural oscillations revealed markedly reduced early-onset evoked theta [4-6 Hz] activity (within 0.5 s) regardless of task difficulty. Moreover, while induced alpha activity increased with task difficulty in controls, this modulation was absent in the cerebral visual impairment group identifying a potential neural correlate related to deficits with visual search and distractor suppression. Finally, cerebral visual impairment participants also showed a sustained induced gamma response [30-45 Hz]. We conclude that impaired visual search performance in cerebral visual impairment is associated with substantial alterations across a wide range of neural oscillation frequencies. This includes both evoked and induced components suggesting the involvement of feedforward and feedback processing as well as local and distributed levels of neural processing.

A modality-independent proto-organization of human multisensory areas.

The processing of multisensory information is based upon the capacity of brain regions, such as the superior temporal cortex, to combine information across modalities. However, it is still unclear whether the representation of coherent auditory and visual events requires any prior audiovisual experience to develop and function. Here we measured brain synchronization during the presentation of an audiovisual, audio-only or video-only version of the same narrative in distinct groups of sensory-deprived (congenitally blind and deaf) and typically developed individuals. Intersubject correlation analysis revealed that the superior temporal cortex was synchronized across auditory and visual conditions, even in sensory-deprived individuals who lack any audiovisual experience. This synchronization was primarily mediated by low-level perceptual features, and relied on a similar modality-independent topographical organization of slow temporal dynamics. The human superior temporal cortex is naturally endowed with a functional scaffolding to yield a common representation across multisensory events.

Neuroplasticity following cochlear implants.

The auditory cortex of people with sensorineural hearing loss can be re-afferented using a cochlear implant (CI): a neural prosthesis that bypasses the damaged cells in the cochlea to directly stimulate the auditory nerve. Although CIs are the most successful neural prosthesis to date, some CI users still do not achieve satisfactory outcomes using these devices. To explain variability in outcomes, clinicians and researchers have increasingly focused their attention on neuroscientific investigations that examined how the auditory cortices respond to the electric signals that originate from the CI. This chapter provides an overview of the literature that examined how the auditory cortex changes its functional properties in response to inputs from the CI, in animal models and in humans. We focus first on the basic responses to sounds delivered through electrical hearing and, next, we examine the integrity of two fundamental aspects of the auditory system: tonotopy and processing of binaural cues. When addressing the effects of CIs in humans, we also consider speech-evoked responses. We conclude by discussing to what extent this neuroscientific literature can contribute to clinical practices and help to overcome variability in outcomes.

Event-related potential correlates of visuo-tactile motion processing in congenitally deaf humans.

The impact of congenital deafness on the development of vision has been investigated to a considerable degree. However, whether multisensory processing is affected by auditory deprivation has often remained largely overlooked. To fill this gap, we investigated the consequences of a profound auditory deprivation from birth on visuo-tactile processing. While the electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded, dynamic visuo-tactile stimuli with a congruent or an incongruent motion direction were presented to a group of congenitally deaf native signers (N = 21) and matched hearing controls (N = 21). Standard stimuli were moving continuously for 200 ms either upwards or downwards, whereas the motion of deviant stimuli was interrupted in one of the two modalities. Participants were asked to detect deviant stimuli, moving in a predefined direction while ignoring deviants moving in the non-target direction. Behaviorally, deaf individuals committed more false alarms than hearing controls in the incongruent condition, that is, they responded more often when deviants moved in the non-target motion direction. ERPs (140-164 ms) of the deaf group were more anteriorly distributed for the visuo-tactile stimulation in comparison to hearing controls. Moreover, visuo-tactile motion congruency effects emerged with a later latency in the deaf group (350-450 ms) than in the hearing control group (200-280 ms). These findings suggest altered selection strategies and neural correlates for visuo-tactile motion processing as a result of congenital deafness.