Processing of Affective Speech Prosody is Impaired in Asperger Syndrome

Abstract

Many people with the diagnosis of Asperger syndrome (AS) show poorly developed skills in understanding emotional messages. The present study addressed discrimination of speech prosody in children with AS at neurophysiological level. Detection of affective prosody was investigated in one-word utterances as indexed by the N1 and the mismatch negativity (MMN) of auditory event-related potentials (ERPs). Data from fourteen boys with AS were compared with those for thirteen typically developed boys. These results suggest atypical neural responses to affective prosody in children with AS and their fathers, especially over the RH, and that this impairment can already be seen at low-level information processes. Our results provide evidence for familial patterns of abnormal auditory brain reactions to prosodic features of speech.

Audio–vocal system regulation in children with autism spectrum disorders

“…Alternatively, even if the sensory representation is accurate and communicated to the cortex, there may be a disconnect between the cortical centers that modulate other cortical or lower level activity due to reduced inter-hemispheric or long-range connectivity (Baron-Cohen et al 2005;Courchesne and Pierce 2005). Given the known deficits in cortical processing of prosody in children with ASD (Erwin et al 1991;Wang et al 2001;Kujala et al 2005;Korpilahti et al 2006), one may speculate that the disruption in sensory-motor integration observed in the ASD-HIGH group in this study results from deficient cortical inhibition during vocalization via any of these plausible mechanisms.…”

“…Alternatively, the ASD-HIGH children may register the stimulus appropriately, but because they have relatively poor control over their vocal system, the result is a very large change in voice F 0 . Regardless of sensitivity, abnormal auditory pathway function in general may be responsible for disrupted input into the initial stage of the auditory vocal motor system (Erwin et al 1991;McClelland et al 1992;Klin 1993;Maziade et al 2000;Wang et al 2001;Boddaert et al 2003;Ceponiene et al 2003;Jansson-Verkasalo et al 2003;Rapin and Dunn 2003;Rosenhall et al 2003;Boddaert et al 2004;Gervais et al 2004;Kasai et al 2005;Kujala et al 2005;Lepisto et al 2005Lepisto et al , 2006Korpilahti et al 2006;Tharpe et al 2006). All of these possibilities warrant further study.…”

“…In one study investigating brainstem transcription of F 0 contour in speech in children with ASD, deficient pitch tracking was identified in only a subset of those children, while brainstem function was normal in the other children with ASD (Russo et al 2008 in press). Further, there is ample evidence for deficient or atypical cortical processing of speech or speech-like stimuli associated with ASD (Wang et al 2001;Boddaert et al 2003Boddaert et al , 2004Ceponiene et al 2003;Jansson-Verkasalo et al 2003;Gervais et al 2004;Kasai et al 2005;Lepisto et al 2005Lepisto et al , 2006, including reports of deficient cortical processing specific to prosody (Erwin et al 1991;Wang et al 2001;Kujala et al 2005;Korpilahti et al 2006). Even amidst these recent findings, much of the physiology behind the language impairment and characteristic speech production patterns in ASD is still unmapped.…”

Why is prosody in speech-language pathology so difficult?

“…It is frequently misplaced (Baltaxe & Guthrie, 1987), suggesting a prosodic disability or functional disorder, or present in excessive or inadequate amounts (Shriberg et al, 2001), suggesting dysprosody. There have been a few imaging studies which indicate that prosody is processed atypically in people with autism: Wang, Dapretto, Hariri, Sigman & Brookheimer (2001) found that nine-year-olds with autism processed prosody differently from control children; Gervais et al (2004) showed that in four adults with autism the voice-selective regions in the superior temporal sulcus failed to be activated in response to voice (as opposed to non-voice) stimuli; Korpilahti (2007) found atypical neural responses to affective prosody in children with Asperger"s syndrome. Although the samples are small, this suggests that the expressive dysprosody may well be associated with the processing atypicality.…”

Recognition of affective prosody in brain-damaged patients and healthy controls: A neurophysiological study using EEG and whole-head MEG

“…This supposition, however, is implausible, since many clinical studies (e.g., Kawakubo et al, 2007;Korpilahti et al, 2007;Thönnessen et al, 2008, "traditional condition") and nonclinical studies (e.g., Pulvermüller et al, 2008;Röttger, Schröger, Grube, Grimm, & Rübsamen, 2007;Ruusuvirta, Huotilainen, & Näätänen, 2007) contributions of adjacent regions can have the opposite sign; that is, activity in response to congruent rather than incongruent words (Rossell, Price, & Nobre, 2003) can increase in one region and decrease in the other. This makes it difficult to formulate strong predictions concerning the putative type of the N400 obtained in response to affective prosody violations.…”