title: Preserved coupling between the reader's voice and the listener's cortical activity in autism spectrum disorders.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Investigating the steadiness of the phase-coupling between the time-course of the reader's voice and brain signals of subjects with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) passively listening to connected speech using magnetoencephalography (MEG). In typically developed subjects, such coupling occurs at the right posterior temporal sulcus (pSTS) for frequencies below 1 Hz, and reflects the neural processing of sentence-level rhythmic prosody at the prelexical level.
  
  
  METHODS
  Cortical neuromagnetic signals were recorded with MEG (Elekta Oy, Finland) while seven right-handed and native French-speaking ASD subjects (six males, one female, range: 13-20 years) listened to live (Live) or recorded (Recorded) voices continuously reading a text in French for five minutes. Coherence was computed between the reader's voice time-course and ASD subjects' MEG signals. Coherent neural sources were subsequently reconstructed using a beamformer.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Significant coupling was found at 0.5 Hz in all ASD subjects in Live and in six subjects in Recorded. Coherent sources were located close to the right pSTS in both conditions. No significant difference was found in coherence levels between Live and Recorded, and between ASD subjects and ten typically developed subjects (right-handed, native French-speaking adults, 5 males, 5 females, age range: 21-38 years) included in a previous study.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study discloses a preserved coupling between the reader's voice and ASD subjects' cortical activity at the right pSTS. These findings support the existence of preserved neural processing of sentence-level rhythmic prosody in ASD. The preservation of early cortical processing of prosodic elements in verbal language might be exploited in therapeutic interventions in ASD.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Cartographie fonctionnelle du Cerveau, UNI - ULB Neuroscience Institute, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium; Laboratoire de Recherches Psychiatriques, UNI - ULB Neuroscience Institute, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Catherine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Clumeck
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Cartographie fonctionnelle du Cerveau, UNI - ULB Neuroscience Institute, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Suarez Garcia
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Cartographie fonctionnelle du Cerveau, UNI - ULB Neuroscience Institute, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Mathieu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bourguignon
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Cartographie fonctionnelle du Cerveau, UNI - ULB Neuroscience Institute, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Vincent
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Wens
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Cartographie fonctionnelle du Cerveau, UNI - ULB Neuroscience Institute, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Op de Beeck
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Cartographie fonctionnelle du Cerveau, UNI - ULB Neuroscience Institute, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Brice
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Marty
authors.affiliation: Centre de référence des troubles envahissants du développement et des troubles autistiques, Hôpital Universitaire des Enfants Reine Fabiola (HUDERF), Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Nicolas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Deconinck
authors.affiliation: Centre de référence des troubles envahissants du développement et des troubles autistiques, Hôpital Universitaire des Enfants Reine Fabiola (HUDERF), Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Marie-Vincianne
authors.initials: MV
authors.lastname: Soncarrieu
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Cartographie fonctionnelle du Cerveau, UNI - ULB Neuroscience Institute, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Serge
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Goldman
authors.affiliation: Brain Research Unit, O.V. Lounasmaa Laboratory and MEG Core, Aalto NeuroImaging, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland.
authors.forename: Veikko
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Jousmäki
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Cartographie fonctionnelle du Cerveau, UNI - ULB Neuroscience Institute, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Van Bogaert
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Cartographie fonctionnelle du Cerveau, UNI - ULB Neuroscience Institute, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Xavier
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: De Tiège
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002659:Child Development Disorders, Pervasive / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D011932:Reading; D014831:Voice; D055815:Young Adult