0000000000076425
AUTHOR
Elena Kushnerenko
Atypical perceptual narrowing in prematurely born infants is associated with compromised language acquisition at 2 years of age
Abstract Background Early auditory experiences are a prerequisite for speech and language acquisition. In healthy children, phoneme discrimination abilities improve for native and degrade for unfamiliar, socially irrelevant phoneme contrasts between 6 and 12 months of age as the brain tunes itself to, and specializes in the native spoken language. This process is known as perceptual narrowing, and has been found to predict normal native language acquisition. Prematurely born infants are known to be at an elevated risk for later language problems, but it remains unclear whether these problems relate to early perceptual narrowing. To address this question, we investigated early neurophysiolog…
Perinatal cerebral insults alter auditory event-related potentials.
Background: Auditory event-related potentials (AERPs) can be used as indices of neural information processing. Altered AERPs have been reported in children and young adults with frontal lobe infarction. Aim: To test the hypothesis that perinatal brain injury affects cortical auditory processing. Methods: We assessed AERPs at term. 6 and 12 months of age in preterm infants [n = 9. median gestational age (GA) 27.9, range 23.9-30.0 wk], term infants with perinatal intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) [n = 5, GA 40.3, range 37.4-42.3 wk], and term infants with perinatal asphyxia In [n = 4. GA 39.4. range 37.9-40.3 wk]. Healthy preterm (n = 16) and term infants (n = 22) served as controls. A harmonic …