Sperdin Holger F, Schaer Marie
Office Médico-Pédagogique, Department of Psychiatry, University of Geneva School of Medicine Geneva, Switzerland.
Office Médico-Pédagogique, Department of Psychiatry, University of Geneva School of MedicineGeneva, Switzerland; Stanford Cognitive & Systems Neuroscience Laboratory, Stanford University School of MedicinePalo Alto, CA, USA.
Front Neurosci. 2016 Aug 25;10:393. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2016.00393. eCollection 2016.
From the time of birth, a newborn is continuously exposed and naturally attracted to human voices, and as he grows, he becomes increasingly responsive to these speech stimuli, which are strong drivers for his language development and knowledge acquisition about the world. In contrast, young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are often insensitive to human voices, failing to orient and respond to them. Failure to attend to speech in turn results in altered development of language and social-communication skills. Here, we review the critical role of orienting to speech in ASD, as well as the neural substrates of human voice processing. Recent functional neuroimaging and electroencephalography studies demonstrate that aberrant voice processing could be a promising marker to identify ASD very early on. With the advent of refined brain imaging methods, coupled with the possibility of screening infants and toddlers, predictive brain function biomarkers are actively being examined and are starting to emerge. Their timely identification might not only help to differentiate between phenotypes, but also guide the clinicians in setting up appropriate therapies, and better predicting or quantifying long-term outcome.
从出生起，新生儿就持续接触并自然地被人类声音所吸引，随着其成长，他对这些言语刺激的反应越来越强烈，这些刺激是其语言发展和对世界认知获取的强大驱动力。相比之下，患有自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的幼儿通常对人类声音不敏感，无法对其进行定向和做出反应。无法关注言语进而导致语言和社交沟通技能发展的改变。在此，我们回顾了在ASD中对言语进行定向的关键作用，以及人类语音处理的神经基础。最近的功能神经影像学和脑电图研究表明，异常的语音处理可能是早期识别ASD的一个有前景的标志物。随着精细脑成像方法的出现，再加上对婴幼儿进行筛查的可能性，预测性脑功能生物标志物正在积极研究中并开始出现。它们的及时识别不仅可能有助于区分不同的表型，还能指导临床医生制定合适的治疗方案，并更好地预测或量化长期结果。
