Impact of hearing loss on visual selective attention: Evidence from N2pc and resting-state networks

Efficient visual attention is fundamental to environmental adaptation and social interaction. While previous studies have observed alterations in visual processing among deaf individuals, findings remain controversial regarding whether these changes stem from hearing loss (sensory compensation vs. cognitive deficit) or sign language experience. To address this issue, the present study provides task-related and resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) evidence to disentangle the specific drivers of visual selective attention plasticity. A visual search task was used to examine selective attention in 95 participants (34 prelingual deaf, 27 hearing signers, and 34 hearing nonsigners). Compared to both hearing groups, deaf individuals exhibited significantly lower hit rates and diminished N2-posterior contralateral (N2pc) amplitudes. Hearing signers and nonsigners showed comparable behavioral performance, N2pc amplitudes, and resting-state network topology, whereas the deaf group was further characterized by a degraded resting-state alpha network topology, evidenced by reduced clustering coefficients, global efficiency, and weakened frontal-occipital connectivity. N2pc amplitude correlated significantly with resting-state network properties and behavioral accuracy. These results suggest that deaf individuals may suffer from an imbalance in the regulation of visual selective attention, most clearly indexed by the evoked N2pc and by intrinsic alpha-network organization, and likely linked to increased resource competition following the loss of auditory monitoring. Our findings provide neurophysiological evidence that these attentional deficits are associated with hearing loss rather than with sign-language experience, offering a new perspective for understanding the boundaries of cross-modal plasticity in the human brain.