A Preliminary Study Characterizing Subcortical and Cortical Auditory Processing and Their Relation to Autistic Traits and Sensory Features.
Erin S M Matsuba, Beth A Prieve, Emily Cary and 5 others
PMID 36227444WHAT IT FOUND
Brainstem responses to repeated speech sounds did not differ between autistic and typically developing children matched on age and non-verbal reasoning.
Autistic children had larger early brain responses to speech sounds and faster responses to a change between sounds.
Key findings
01After accounting for full-scale IQ and verbal IQ, the brainstem speech responses did not differ between autistic and typically developing children.
02Autistic children showed larger early cortical responses to the repeated speech sound than TD children, especially at frontocentral and right temporal sites.
03Autistic children showed faster cortical discrimination responses than TD children.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample was small, with only 10 autistic participants, and it was recruited during the COVID-19 pandemic. All participants identified as White and non-Hispanic/Latinx, and the autistic group had average IQ scores, so the findings may not apply to many autistic people with different backgrounds or higher support needs. The groups were matched on non-verbal reasoning, but full-scale IQ and verbal IQ were higher in the TD group, so language and cognitive ability may still affect the results. Four TD participants had a sibling with autism, and five autistic participants had reported ADHD diagnoses that were not confirmed diagnostically. The correlations were exploratory and were run across groups, so they do not show that brain responses cause or diagnose autism traits or sensory features. The P1 result depended on the time window chosen; a wider 100 ms window without IQ covariates did not show a group difference. The MMN task used different sounds as standard and deviant, so stimulus differences may have contributed to the discrimination response.
Declared interests
Funded by Syracuse University and the National Institute of Mental Health.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that autistic children have impaired brainstem speech processing. The brainstem speech responses did not differ between groups. The cortical differences were preliminary, exploratory, and dependent on measurement choices.