This study investigates how the auditory cortex adapts to sensory loss in children with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), aiming to identify the neural reorganization patterns that support compensatory cognitive processing.

Methods: Twenty-four SNHL children (divided into exercise intervention and non-intervention groups) and twenty-four normal-hearing children performed a 2-back working memory task during fMRI scanning. Researchers utilized Multi-Variate Pattern Analysis (MVPA) and Searchlight Analysis to decode brain responses, while Representational Similarity Analysis (RSA) quantified within-modal variability.

Results: SNHL children exhibited specific neural representations of working memory in both visual and auditory cortices, though decoding accuracy in the primary visual cortex (V1) was lower than in normal-hearing peers.

• The 11-week aerobic exercise intervention significantly improved executive functions, reducing reaction times in inhibition, working memory, and shifting tasks.
• Post-intervention, SNHL children showed significantly increased decoding accuracy in the Heschl's gyrus, V1, and frontoparietal network.
• RSA revealed that within-modal variability in the Heschl’s gyrus significantly decreased after exercise, indicating more consistent neural representations.

Conclusion: Auditory deprivation triggers cross-modal recruitment where the auditory cortex is regulated by higher-order cognitive information. These findings suggest that aerobic exercise can enhance cognitive function by refining neural representation structures through adaptive plasticity.

Hang Qu has completed his PhD at Soochow University under the supervision of Professor Chunhong Hu. Additionally served as a visiting scholar in the Industrial and Systems Engineering department at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He is Radiological Diagnostic Physician with eight years of clinical experience at the Affiliated Hospital of Yangzhou University. He has published more than 20 papers in reputed journals and has been serving as an editorial board member of frontier.