Department of Pediatrics, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016 USA.
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215 USA.
J Neurodev Disord. 2014;6(1):43. doi: 10.1186/1866-1955-6-43. Epub 2014 Nov 28.
Atypical neural responses to repeated auditory and linguistic stimuli have been reported both in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their first-degree relatives. Recent work suggests that the younger siblings of children with ASD have atypical event-related potentials (ERPs) to repeated tones at 9 months of age; however, the functional significance is unclear, and it is unknown whether this atypicality is also present in response to linguistic stimuli.
We analyzed ERPs to repetitive and deviant consonant-vowel stimuli at 9 months in 35 unaffected high-risk-for-autism (HRA) infant siblings of children with ASD and 45 low-risk control (LRC) infants. We examined a positive component, the P150, over frontal and central electrode sites and investigated the relationships between this component and later behavior.
Over frontal electrodes, HRA infants had larger-amplitude ERPs to repetitions of the standard than LRC infants, whereas ERPs to the deviant did not differ between HRA and LRC infants. Furthermore, for HRA infants, the amplitude of ERPs to the standards was positively correlated with later language ability.
Our work suggests that atypical ERPs to repeated speech during infancy are a possible endophenotype of ASD but that this atypicality is associated with beneficial, rather than disordered, language development. Potential mechanisms driving these relationships and implications for development are discussed.
在自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者及其一级亲属中，均有报道称其对重复的听觉和语言刺激会产生非典型的神经反应。最近的研究表明，ASD 患儿的弟弟妹妹在 9 个月大时对重复的音调会产生异常的事件相关电位（ERP）；然而，其功能意义尚不清楚，也不知道这种异常是否也存在于对语言刺激的反应中。
我们分析了 35 名自闭症高风险婴儿（HRA）兄弟姐妹和 45 名低风险对照组（LRC）婴儿在 9 个月时对重复和偏差的辅音-元音刺激的 ERP。我们在额中和中央电极部位观察了一个正成分，即 P150，并研究了该成分与后期行为之间的关系。
在额部电极上，HRA 婴儿对标准刺激的重复的 ERP 幅度大于 LRC 婴儿，而对偏差刺激的 ERP 则在 HRA 和 LRC 婴儿之间没有差异。此外，对于 HRA 婴儿来说，对标准刺激的 ERP 幅度与后期语言能力呈正相关。
我们的工作表明，婴儿期对重复语音的异常 ERP 可能是 ASD 的一个潜在表型，但这种异常与有益的、而非紊乱的语言发展有关。讨论了驱动这些关系的潜在机制及其对发展的影响。
