Asperger's Syndrome Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Asperger's Syndrome, including details on symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, medication.

Auditory cortical change detection in adults with Asperger syndrome.

Lepistö T, Nieminen-von Wendt T, von Wendt L, Näätänen R, Kujala T

Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Department of Psychology, P.O. Box 9, University of Helsinki, and Department of Child Neurology, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Finland. tuulia.lepisto@helsinki.fi

The present study investigated whether auditory deficits reported in children with Asperger syndrome (AS) are also present in adulthood. To this end, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from adults with AS for duration, pitch, and phonetic changes in vowels, and for acoustically matched non-speech stimuli. These subjects had enhanced mismatch negativity (MMN) amplitudes particularly for pitch and duration deviants, indicating enhanced sound-discrimination abilities. Furthermore, as reflected by the P3a, their involuntary orienting was enhanced for changes in non-speech sounds, but tended to be deficient for changes in speech sounds. The results are consistent with those reported earlier in children with AS, except for the duration-MMN, which was diminished in children and enhanced in adults.

Published 23 February 2007 in Neurosci Lett, 414(2): 136-40.
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