Dysfunction of the auditory cortex persists in infants with certain cleft types

Abstract

Language and learning disabilities occur in almost half of individuals with oral clefts. The characteristics of these cognitive dysfunctions vary according to the cleft type, and the mechanisms underlying the relation between cleft type, cognitive dysfunction, and cleft-caused middle-ear disease are unknown. This study investigates preattentive auditory discrimination, which plays a significant role in language acquisition and usage, in infants with different cleft types. A mismatch negativity (MMN) component of brain evoked potentials, which indexes preconscious sound discrimination, and brain responses to rare sine-wave tones were recorded in 12 healthy infants and 32 infants with oral clefts at the ages of 0 and 6 months. Infants with clefts were subdivided into two categories: those with cleft lip and palate (CLP) (n=11 at birth, n=6 at the age of 6 months) and those with cleft palate only (CPO) (n=17 at birth, n=8 at the age of 6 months). At both ages, brain responses to rare sounds tended to be smaller in both cleft subgroups than in healthy peers. However, in the latency range of 300 to 500 ms, the MMN was significantly smaller in infants with CPO. In infants with CLP, the MMN was comparable to that of healthy infants. Differences in auditory discrimination between infants with CLP and CPO, as reflected by MMN, were detectable at birth and persisted into later infancy. This pattern parallels known behavioural differences between children with these cleft types. Brain responses to rare sounds, in contrast, had no differentiative power with respect to the cleft type.

Detecting violations of temporal regularities in waking and sleeping two-month-old infants

“…For example, some studies showed that the amplitude of the MMN-like ERPs elicited by frequency deviance was reduced in newborns and infants with cleft palate. This reduction appeared to remain constant over time (Cheour et al, 1999;Čeponienė et al, 2000). Further, Holopainen, Korpilahti, Juottonen, and Sillanpää (1997) found that the MMN to frequency deviance was attenuated in young children with developmental aphasia.…”

Mismatch Responses to Pitch Changes in Early Infancy

“…Similarly, although several studies (e.g., Friedrich et al, 2004;Morr et al, 2002;Čeponiené et al, 2000, 2002Cheour et al, 1998;Cheour-Luhtanen et al, 1996) suggest that the MMN-like response to change seen in infancy could represent discrimination processes in auditory cortex similar to those underlying the MMN response in adults, this interpretation also needs validation. The source of MMN is thought to be in the supragranular layers of A2, including layers II and upper III ( Javitt, Steinschneider, Schroeder, Vaughan, & Arezzo, 1994).…”

“…Table 1 summarizes the methods and major findings of these studies. A negativity in the difference wave similar to the adult MMN has been reported in infants from preterm newborns to 1-yearolds (Hirasawa, Kurihara, & Konishi, 2003;Čeponiené et al, 2000, 2002Alho et al, 1990). However, a number of studies instead report a slow positive component in the difference wave ranging from 200 to 450 msec (Leppänen, Guttorm, Pihko, Takkinen, & Lyytinen, 2004;Morr, Shafer, Kreuzer, & Kurtzberg, 2002;Cheour et al, 1999;Leppänen et al, 1997).…”

The infant as a prelinguistic model for language learning impairments: Predicting from event-related potentials to behavior

“…For example, a mismatch-like response 2 (MMR) dependent on the immediate sound context can be observed in both preterm and full-term infants. This MMR can be elicited with speech stimuli (Cheour et al, 1997(Cheour et al, , 2002a(Cheour et al, , 2002cCheour-Luhtanen et al, 1995, 1996Dehaene-Lambertz, 2000;Friedrich, Weber, & Friederici, 2004;Kushnerenko et al, 2002aKushnerenko et al, , 2002bKushnerenko et al, , 2001Leppänen, Pihko, Eklund, & Lyytinen, 1999;Martynova, Kirjavainen, & Cheour 2003;Weber, Hahne, Friedrich, & Friederici, 2003) and also with tone stimuli differing in parameters such as frequency, intensity, location and duration (Ceponiené et al, 2000Cheour et al, 2002a;Cheour, Kushnerenko, Ceponiené, Fellman, & Näätänen, 2002b;Dehaene-Lambertz, 2000;Kurtzberg, Vaughan, Kreuzer, & Fliegler, 1995;Leppänen, Eklund, & Lyytinen, 1997;Morr et al, 2002;see Cheour, Leppänen, & Kraus, 2000;Leppänen et al, 2004b for reviews).…”