Atypical Bilateral Brain Synchronization in the Early Stage of Human Voice Auditory Processing in Young Children with Autism

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been postulated to involve impaired neuronal cooperation in large-scale neural networks, including cortico-cortical interhemispheric circuitry. In the context of ASD, alterations in both peripheral and central auditory processes have also attracted a great deal of interest because these changes appear to represent pathophysiological processes; therefore, many prior studies have focused on atypical auditory responses in ASD. The auditory evoked field (AEF), recorded by magnetoencephalography, and the synchronization of these processes between right and left hemispheres was recently suggested to reflect various cognitive abilities in children. However, to date, no previous study has focused on AEF synchronization in ASD subjects. To assess global coordination across spatially distributed brain regions, the analysis of Omega complexity from multichannel neurophysiological data was proposed. Using Omega complexity analysis, we investigated the global coordination of AEFs in 3–8-year-old typically developing (TD) children (n = 50) and children with ASD (n = 50) in 50-ms time-windows. Children with ASD displayed significantly higher Omega complexities compared with TD children in the time-window of 0–50 ms, suggesting lower whole brain synchronization in the early stage of the P1m component. When we analyzed the left and right hemispheres separately, no significant differences in any time-windows were observed. These results suggest lower right-left hemispheric synchronization in children with ASD compared with TD children. Our study provides new evidence of aberrant neural synchronization in young children with ASD by investigating auditory evoked neural responses to the human voice.

Cortical signatures of auditory object binding in children with autism spectrum disorder are anomalous in concordance with behavior and diagnosis

“…In the visual domain, atypical neural responses to illusory figures and contours have been interpreted as indirect evidence of impaired figure-ground segregation in ASD [13][14][15]. However, it is not known whether similar processes may also underlie the widespread auditory processing abnormalities in ASD [10][11][12][16][17][18][19][20][21][22], which in turn may contribute to the well-documented speech processing and language impairments associated with the disorder [21,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31].…”

Incidence of Otolaryngological Manifestations in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Special Focus on Auditory Disorders

“…Another study utilized magnetoencephalography to compare cortical responses between ASD and TD individuals to the passive mismatch paradigm [ 51 ]. The subjects completed the paradigm in a quiet and noisy environment and the mismatch field response was obtained.…”

“…The response of the mismatch field was correlated with the severity of ASD. Thus, the recruitment of neural resources in ASD with a reduction in top-down modulation is needed to decrease the impact of noise on auditory processing [ 51 ]. A different team investigated the auditory evoked field (AEF) synchronization in ASD subjects.…”

“…These results were consistent with reports of reduced brain hemodynamic synchronization in individuals with ASD. The reduced interhemispheric connectivity may cause reduced synchronization during auditory information processing [ 51 ].…”