The maturation of auditory responses in infants and young children: a cross-sectional study from 6 to 59 months

Abstract

Background: An understanding of the maturation of auditory cortex responses in typically developing infants and toddlers is needed to later identify auditory processing abnormalities in infants at risk for neurodevelopmental disorders. The availability of infant and young child magnetoencephalography (MEG) systems may now provide near optimal assessment of left and right hemisphere auditory neuromagnetic responses in young populations. To assess the performance of a novel whole-head infant MEG system, a cross-sectional study examined the maturation of left and right auditory cortex responses in children 6- to 59-months of age.Methods: Blocks of 1000 Hz (1st and 3rd blocks) and 500 Hz tones (2nd block) were presented while MEG data were recorded using an infant/young child biomagnetometer (Artemis 123). Data were obtained from 29 children (11 males; 6- to 59-months). Latency measures were obtained for the first positive-to-negative evoked response waveform complex in each hemisphere. Latency and age associations as well as frequency and hemisphere latency differences were examined. For the 1000 Hz tone, measures of reliability were computed.Results: For the first response—a response with a “P2m” topography—latencies decreased as a function of age. For the second response—a response with a “N2m” topography—no N2m latency and age relationships were observed. A main effect of tone frequency showed earlier P2m responses for 1st 1000 Hz (150 ms) and 2nd 1000 Hz (148 ms) vs. 500 Hz tones (162 ms). A significant main effect of hemisphere showed earlier N2m responses for 2nd 1000 Hz (226 ms) vs. 1st 1000 Hz (241 ms) vs. 500 Hz tones (265 ms). P2m and N2m interclass correlation coefficient latency findings were as follows: left P2m (0.72, p < 0.001), right P2m (0.84, p < 0.001), left N2m (0.77, p < 0.001), and right N2m (0.77,p < 0.01).Conclusions: Findings of strong age and latency associations, sensitivity to tone frequency, and good test-retest reliability support the viability of longitudinal infant MEG studies that include younger as well as older participants as well as studies examining auditory processing abnormalities in infants at risk for neurodevelopmental disorders.

Auditory structural connectivity in preterm and healthy term infants during the first postnatal year

“…Another limitation is that we only measured the structure of the pathways, and not auditory function. Other studies have focused on the association between white matter maturation in the auditory cortex and single‐cell electrophysiology in animal models, or used other techniques (i.e., Magnetoencephalography, Electroencephalography) to examine the development of human auditory cortex function during both typical and atypical development (Edgar et al, ; Kikuchi, Yoshimura, & Minabe, ; Roberts et al, ; Roberts, Lanza, Dell, Qasmieh, & Hines, ). Future multimodal studies, therefore, are needed in order to follow the specific development of these pathways and relate them with the development of auditory processing abilities.…”

Auditory encoding abnormalities in children with autism spectrum disorder suggest delayed development of auditory cortex

“…Future studies examining auditory processes in infants and children also are of interest given that treatments seeking to normalize auditory processes in ASD will likely target younger rather than older populations in order to have a better chance at normalizing auditory processes. In these studies, use of a whole-head infant MEG system is preferred given that MEG sensors are closer to the head in infant versus adult MEG systems [ 59 – 63 ].…”

Attention training improves aberrant neural dynamics during working memory processing in veterans with PTSD

“…Such a repeated session would have provided a powerful control for natural variability over time in WM responses. We did not collect a second MEG session in controls because of the cost of MEG, and because there are many publications that have shown high test–retest reliability for MEG metrics (Ahonen, Huotilainen, & Brattico, 2016; Becker et al, 2012; Edgar et al, 2015; Martín-Buro, Garcés, & Maestú, 2016; Tan, Gross, & Uhlhaas, 2015). Importantly, Ahonen and colleagues (2016) found that neurophysiological responses during an N -back WM task were highly reliable.…”