Collaborative research at the Institute of Psychology reveals that auditory scaffolding supports hierarchical rhythmic processing in vision.

A research team led by Jiang Yi at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with Chen Jie's group at Hunan Normal University, investigated individuals with early-onset deafness and found that early auditory deprivation selectively impacts visual rhythmic processing: fundamental rhythm tracking remains intact, whereas higher-order chunking rhythm tracking is significantly impaired, accompanied by weakened functional connectivity between visual-auditory regions and between visual and inferior frontal gyrus regions. The study proposes a "hierarchical auditory scaffolding" theory to explain how auditory deprivation specifically affects non-auditory chunking rhythm perception, thereby extending the understanding of cross-modal plasticity and providing a reference for hearing impairment assessment and rehabilitation.