Cerebral laterality for phonemic and prosodic cue decoding in children with autism.
This study examined the cerebral functional lateralization, from a phonological perspective, in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing children (TDC). With near infrared spectroscopy, we measured auditory evoked-responses in the temporal areas to phonemic and prosodic contrasts in word contexts. The results of TDC showed stronger left-dominant and right-dominant responses to phonemic and prosodic differences, respectively. Furthermore, although ASD children displayed similar tendencies, the functional asymmetry for phonemic changes was relatively weak, suggesting less-specialized left-brain functions. The typical asymmetry for the prosodic condition was further discussed in terms of acoustic-physical perceptual ability of ASD children. The study revealed differential neural recruitment in decoding phonetic cues between ASD children and TDC and verified the applicability of near infrared spectroscopy as a suitable neuroimaging method for children with developmental disorders.
Minagawa-Kawai
Yasuyo
Y
Graduate School of Human Relations, Keio University, Mita, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan. myasuyo@bea.hi-ho.ne.jp
Naoi
Nozomi
N
Kikuchi
Naoko
N
Yamamoto
Jun-Ichi
J
Nakamura
Katsuki
K
Kojima
Shozo
S
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002560:Cerebrovascular Circulation; D054022:Cerebrum / Q000098:blood supply / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002648:Child; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003463:Cues; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D007807:Language Tests; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D019265:Spectroscopy, Near-Infrared; D013060:Speech; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*