Healthy full-term infants’ brain responses to emotionally and linguistically relevant sounds using a multi-feature mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm

Abstract

We evaluated the feasibility of a multi-feature mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm in studying auditory processing of healthy newborns. The aim was to examine the automatic change-detection and processing of semantic and emotional information in speech in newborns. Brain responses of 202 healthy newborns were recorded with a multi-feature paradigm including a Finnish bi-syllabic pseudo-word/ta-ta/as a standard stimulus, six linguistically relevant deviant stimuli and three emotionally relevant stimuli (happy, sad, angry). Clear responses to emotional sounds were found already at the early latency window 100-200 ms, whereas responses to linguistically relevant minor changes and emotional stimuli at the later latency window 300-500 ms did not reach significance. Moreover, significant interaction between gender and emotional stimuli was found in the early latency window. Further studies on using multi-feature paradigms with linguistic and emotional stimuli in newborns are needed, especially those containing of follow-ups, enabling the assessment of the predictive value of early variations between subjects.

Repeated Parental Singing During Kangaroo Care Improved Neural Processing of Speech Sound Changes in Preterm Infants at Term Age

“…The multi-feature paradigm used in this study was originally developed by Pakarinen et al (2014), and also used in our previous studies with a reduced number of deviant sounds (Kostilainen et al, 2018(Kostilainen et al, , 2020. The paradigm consisted of a 336 ms Finnish bi-syllabic pseudoword /ta-ta/ as a standard sound (with 46% probability, 700 in each block).…”

Maturation of Speech-Sound ERPs in 5–6-Year-Old Children: A Longitudinal Study

“…The MMN is a very convenient tool for studying children, as it does not require concentration in task to be elicited ( Näätänen et al, 2010 ; for a review, see e.g., Näätänen et al, 2007 ). Regardingdevelopmental studies, it is noteworthy that already fetuses ( Huotilainen et al, 2005 ) and newborn babies show MMN-like responses ( Cheour et al, 2000 ; Trainor et al, 2001 ; Kushnerenko et al, 2002b ; Partanen et al, 2013a ) for e.g., frequency changes ( Alho et al, 1990 ), speech stimuli ( Csépe, 1995 ), musical stimuli ( Partanen et al, 2013a ) and emotional pseudo-word stimuli ( Kostilainen et al, 2018 ). Likewise, the MMN is well established in pre-schoolers ( Lovio et al, 2009 ; Lee et al, 2012 ) and in schoolchildren ( Kraus et al, 1999 ; Cheour et al, 2000 ; Datta et al, 2010 ).…”

Attenuated brain responses to speech sounds in moderate preterm infants at term age

“…The EEG data were re‐referenced offline to the algebraic average of the mastoids. Those data were offline filtered from 1 to 20 Hz, and epochs containing external artefacts exceeding ±150 μV were removed, as done in previous studies in infants (Kostilainen et al., 2018; Kushnerenko et al., 2007; Martynova, Kirjavainen, & Cheour, 2003; Paquette et al., 2015). EEG data were split into epochs from −100 to 600 ms from stimulus onset and baseline corrected.…”