Neural Biomarkers for Dyslexia, ADHD, and ADD in the Auditory Cortex of Children

Abstract

Dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and attention deficit disorder (ADD) show distinct clinical profiles that may include auditory and language-related impairments. Currently, an objective brain-based diagnosis of these developmental disorders is still unavailable. We investigated the neuro-auditory systems of dyslexic, ADHD, ADD, and age-matched control children (N = 147) using neuroimaging, magnetencephalography and psychoacoustics. All disorder subgroups exhibited an oversized left planum temporale and an abnormal interhemispheric asynchrony (10–40 ms) of the primary auditory evoked P1-response. Considering right auditory cortex morphology, bilateral P1 source waveform shapes, and auditory performance, the three disorder subgroups could be reliably differentiated with outstanding accuracies of 89–98%. We therefore for the first time provide differential biomarkers for a brain-based diagnosis of dyslexia, ADHD, and ADD. The method allowed not only allowed for clear discrimination between two subtypes of attentional disorders (ADHD and ADD), a topic controversially discussed for decades in the scientific community, but also revealed the potential for objectively identifying comorbid cases. Noteworthy, in children playing a musical instrument, after three and a half years of training the observed interhemispheric asynchronies were reduced by about 2/3, thus suggesting a strong beneficial influence of music experience on brain development. These findings might have far-reaching implications for both research and practice and enable a profound understanding of the brain-related etiology, diagnosis, and musically based therapy of common auditory-related developmental disorders and learning disabilities.

Neural Entrainment and Sensorimotor Synchronization to the Beat in Children with Developmental Dyslexia: An EEG Study

“…Precise specification of neural mechanisms should enable the optimization of remedial programmes based on improving temporal synchronization in children, for example programmes based on drumming and other forms of rhythm production, which have been shown to enhance both children's phonological awareness and their reading development (Overy et al, 2003; Degé and Schwarzer, 2011; Bhide et al, 2013; Slater et al, 2014; Flaugnacco et al, 2015; Serrallach et al, 2016). Following prior work by Nozaradan et al (2015), we aimed to use beat-related SS-EPs to disentangle sensory- and motor-related neural beat entrainment in children with developmental dyslexia and age-matched control children.…”

Reduced cortical thickness in Heschl's gyrus as an in vivo marker for human primary auditory cortex

“…In this study, two independent samples of 60 children aged 8–11 years (mean age 9.7 ± 0.72 years; 27 male, 33 female) and 60 adults aged 18–55 years (mean age 34.0 ± 9.6 years; 28 male, 32 female) without any neurological, developmental, or learning disorders were selected. Children were recruited as a part of the research project “AMseL: Audio‐ and neuroplasticity of musical learning” funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) (Seither‐Preisler et al, ; Serrallach et al, ). Adults were chosen as an arbitrary sample from the normal population as part of the Heisenberg program “Sound perception between outstanding musical abilities and auditory dysfunction: The neural basis of individual predisposition, maturation, and learning‐induced plasticity in a lifespan perspective” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).…”

“…Auditory evoked fields (AEFs) were recorded using a Neuromag‐122 whole‐head MEG system in response to a pseudorandomized sequence of seven different simple instrumental tones (piano, guitar, flute, bass clarinet, trumpet, violin, and drums) and five artificial simple harmonic complex tones that have successfully been employed in earlier studies (Schneider et al, ; Seither‐Preisler et al, ; Serrallach et al, ; Wengenroth et al, ). These stimuli evoke both the earlier primary auditory P1 response occurring about 30–80 ms after tone onset and the later secondary auditory N1 and P2 auditory responses occurring about 90–250 ms after tone onset.…”

“…Therefore, the fitting intervals were adjusted from peak onset time either toward the saddle point in case of a two‐peak complex or toward the main peak latency in case of a merged single P1 peak. Due to developmental maturation, the P1 response complex occurs around 30–70 ms after tone onset in adults (Schneider et al, ), but considerably later around 60–95 ms in primary school children (Ponton, Eggermont, Khosla, Kwong, & Don, ; Seither‐Preisler et al, ; Serrallach et al, ; Sharma et al, ). For both, children and adults, the response‐dependent time windows were clearly detectable from the course of the individual source waveforms and could clearly be separated from the following later secondary N1 response, which typically starts to develop at the age of 8–10 years (Seither‐Preisler et al, ).…”

Sing Chinese and tap Tagalog? Predicting individual differences in musical and phonetic aptitude using language families differing by sound-typology

“…Oechslin, Meyer, & Jäncke, 2010;Seither-Preisler, Parncutt, & Schneider, 2014) evidence has been provided that music and language are also partially processed in the same brain regions. Learning a musical instrument also seems to affect learning abilities in general (Serrallach et al, 2016), and musical expertise leads to higher recall, memorisation and imitation ability of foreign language material (Christiner & Reiterer, 2015Fonseca-Mora et al, 2015) stressing that the interconnectivity of both faculties may be one out of many reasons why high achievement in one of the two domains also explains high achievement in the other. Recent investigations have also shown that a lack of foreign language experience can be compensated by musical training 'by strengthening the neural encoding of important acoustic information' (Intartaglia, White-Schwoch, Kraus, & Schön, 2017), while other researchers concluded that long term musical training has a modulatory effect which has an impact on the linguistic organisation of the brain as well (Milovanov & Tervaniemi, 2011).…”