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Background: An important factor in the clinical outcome of cochlear implantation is the age of the patient. Compared to older patients, children with congenital deafness have a better outcome when the implantation is made before the age of 2 years. The cause may lie in the molecular biology of the brain, which changes during postnatal maturation., Methods: Protein probes were obtained from tissue of the rat inferior colliculus at different ages. The probes were analyzed using 2-dimensional SDS electrophoresis., Results: The expression of GAP-43, a protein expressed by neurons during axonal outgrowth and synaptogenesis, and the total number of the protein species showed a significant reduction during ontogenesis. This shows that while neurons gradually assume their specific function, they downregulate GAP-43 and the molecular complexity decreases., Conclusions: Due to a lack of neuronal pluripotency at later developmental stages, the flexibility to adapt to the afferent activation provided by a cochlear implant is increasingly limited.

The auditory pathway of guinea pigs was labeled with [14C]-deoxyglucose after mon- or binaural stimulation with farfield white noise in a sound-proof chamber. In the autoradiographs, all auditory nuclei were labeled. The highest metabolic effects were seen in the dorsal cochlear nucleus, the lateral superior olivary nucleus, and in the inferior colliculus. No selective labeling was observed in the auditory cortex. Monaural stimulation depressed the metabolic activity contralaterally in the ventral cochlear nucleus and ipsilaterally in the medial nucleus of the trapezoid body, the dorsomedial periolivary nucleus, and in the inferior colliculus.