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Bonmassar C, Widmann A, Wetzel N. The impact of novelty and emotion on attention-related neuronal and pupil responses in children. Dev Cogn Neurosci 2020; 42:100766. [PMID: 32452459 PMCID: PMC7068055 DOI: 10.1016/j.dcn.2020.100766] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/20/2019] [Revised: 12/13/2019] [Accepted: 02/01/2020] [Indexed: 11/21/2022] Open
Abstract
Focusing on relevant and ignoring irrelevant information is essential for many learning processes. The present study investigated attention-related brain activity and pupil dilation responses, evoked by task-irrelevant emotional novel sounds. In the framework of current theories about the relation between attention and the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system, we simultaneously registered event-related potentials (ERPs) in the EEG and changes in pupil diameter (PDR). Unexpected emotional negative and neutral environmental novel sounds were presented within a sequence of repeated standard sounds to 7-10-year-old children and to adults, while participants focused on a visual task. Novel sounds evoked distinctive ERP components, reflecting attention processes and a biphasic PDR in both age groups. Amplitudes of the novel-minus-standard ERPs were increased in children compared to adults, indicating immature neuronal basis of auditory attention in middle childhood. Emotional versus neutral novel sounds evoked increased responses in the ERPs and in the PDR in both age groups. This demonstrates the increased impact of emotional sounds on attention mechanisms and indicates an advanced level of emotional information processing in children. The similar pattern of novel-related PDR and ERPs is conforming to recent theories, emphasizing the role of the LC-NE system in attention processes adding a developmental perspective.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Andreas Widmann
- Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology, Magdeburg, Germany; Institute of Psychology, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Nicole Wetzel
- Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology, Magdeburg, Germany; University of Applied Sciences Magdeburg-Stendal, Germany; Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences, Magdeburg, Germany
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Charpentier J, Kovarski K, Houy-Durand E, Malvy J, Saby A, Bonnet-Brilhault F, Latinus M, Gomot M. Emotional prosodic change detection in autism Spectrum disorder: an electrophysiological investigation in children and adults. J Neurodev Disord 2018; 10:28. [PMID: 30227832 PMCID: PMC6145332 DOI: 10.1186/s11689-018-9246-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/12/2017] [Accepted: 09/07/2018] [Indexed: 12/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Background Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by atypical behaviors in social environments and in reaction to changing events. While this dyad of symptoms is at the core of the pathology along with atypical sensory behaviors, most studies have investigated only one dimension. A focus on the sameness dimension has shown that intolerance to change is related to an atypical pre-attentional detection of irregularity. In the present study, we addressed the same process in response to emotional change in order to evaluate the interplay between alterations of change detection and socio-emotional processing in children and adults with autism. Methods Brain responses to neutral and emotional prosodic deviancies (mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a, reflecting change detection and orientation of attention toward change, respectively) were recorded in children and adults with autism and in controls. Comparison of neutral and emotional conditions allowed distinguishing between general deviancy and emotional deviancy effects. Moreover, brain responses to the same neutral and emotional stimuli were recorded when they were not deviants to evaluate the sensory processing of these vocal stimuli. Results In controls, change detection was modulated by prosody: in children, this was characterized by a lateralization of emotional MMN to the right hemisphere, and in adults, by an earlier MMN for emotional deviancy than for neutral deviancy. In ASD, an overall atypical change detection was observed with an earlier MMN and a larger P3a compared to controls suggesting an unusual pre-attentional orientation toward any changes in the auditory environment. Moreover, in children with autism, deviancy detection depicted reduced MMN amplitude. In addition in children with autism, contrary to adults with autism, no modulation of the MMN by prosody was present and sensory processing of both neutral and emotional vocal stimuli appeared atypical. Conclusions Overall, change detection remains altered in people with autism. However, differences between children and adults with ASD evidence a trend toward normalization of vocal processing and of the automatic detection of emotion deviancy with age.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - K Kovarski
- UMR1253, INSERM, Université de Tours, TOURS, France
| | - E Houy-Durand
- UMR1253, INSERM, Université de Tours, TOURS, France.,Centre Universitaire de Pédopsychiatrie, CHRU de Tours, TOURS, France
| | - J Malvy
- UMR1253, INSERM, Université de Tours, TOURS, France.,Centre Universitaire de Pédopsychiatrie, CHRU de Tours, TOURS, France
| | - A Saby
- Centre Universitaire de Pédopsychiatrie, CHRU de Tours, TOURS, France
| | - F Bonnet-Brilhault
- UMR1253, INSERM, Université de Tours, TOURS, France.,Centre Universitaire de Pédopsychiatrie, CHRU de Tours, TOURS, France
| | - M Latinus
- UMR1253, INSERM, Université de Tours, TOURS, France
| | - M Gomot
- UMR1253, INSERM, Université de Tours, TOURS, France.
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Lindström R, Lepistö-Paisley T, Makkonen T, Reinvall O, Nieminen-von Wendt T, Alén R, Kujala T. Atypical perceptual and neural processing of emotional prosodic changes in children with autism spectrum disorders. Clin Neurophysiol 2018; 129:2411-2420. [PMID: 30278390 DOI: 10.1016/j.clinph.2018.08.018] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/09/2018] [Revised: 07/20/2018] [Accepted: 08/22/2018] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
OBJECTIVE The present study explored the processing of emotional speech prosody in school-aged children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) but without marked language impairments (children with ASD [no LI]). METHODS The mismatch negativity (MMN)/the late discriminative negativity (LDN), reflecting pre-attentive auditory discrimination processes, and the P3a, indexing involuntary orienting to attention-catching changes, were recorded to natural word stimuli uttered with different emotional connotations (neutral, sad, scornful and commanding). Perceptual prosody discrimination was addressed with a behavioral sound-discrimination test. RESULTS Overall, children with ASD (no LI) were slower in behaviorally discriminating prosodic features of speech stimuli than typically developed control children. Further, smaller standard-stimulus event related potentials (ERPs) and MMN/LDNs were found in children with ASD (no LI) than in controls. In addition, the amplitude of the P3a was diminished and differentially distributed on the scalp in children with ASD (no LI) than in control children. CONCLUSIONS Processing of words and changes in emotional speech prosody is impaired at various levels of information processing in school-aged children with ASD (no LI). SIGNIFICANCE The results suggest that low-level speech sound discrimination and orienting deficits might contribute to emotional speech prosody processing impairments observed in ASD.
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Affiliation(s)
- R Lindström
- Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Finland.
| | - T Lepistö-Paisley
- Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Finland; Department of Pediatric Neurology, Helsinki University Hospital, Helsinki, Finland
| | - T Makkonen
- Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Finland
| | - O Reinvall
- Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Finland; Department of Pediatric Neurology, Helsinki University Hospital, Helsinki, Finland
| | - T Nieminen-von Wendt
- Neuropsychiatric Rehabilitation and Medical Centre NeuroMental, Helsinki, Finland
| | - R Alén
- Department of Child Neurology, Central Finland Central Hospital, Jyväskylä, Finland
| | - T Kujala
- Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Finland
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Brain mechanisms involved in angry prosody change detection in school-age children and adults, revealed by electrophysiology. COGNITIVE AFFECTIVE & BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE 2018; 18:748-763. [DOI: 10.3758/s13415-018-0602-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/22/2022]
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Review and Classification of Emotion Recognition Based on EEG Brain-Computer Interface System Research: A Systematic Review. APPLIED SCIENCES-BASEL 2017. [DOI: 10.3390/app7121239] [Citation(s) in RCA: 118] [Impact Index Per Article: 16.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/02/2023]
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Lindström R, Lepistö-Paisley T, Vanhala R, Alén R, Kujala T. Impaired neural discrimination of emotional speech prosody in children with autism spectrum disorder and language impairment. Neurosci Lett 2016; 628:47-51. [PMID: 27291458 DOI: 10.1016/j.neulet.2016.06.016] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/02/2016] [Revised: 05/13/2016] [Accepted: 06/08/2016] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
Abstract
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by deficient social and communication skills, including difficulties in perceiving speech prosody. The present study addressed processing of emotional prosodic changes (sad, scornful and commanding) in natural word stimuli in typically developed school-aged children and in children with ASD and language impairment. We found that the responses to a repetitive word were diminished in amplitude in the children with ASD, reflecting impaired speech encoding. Furthermore, the amplitude of the MMN/LDN component, reflecting cortical discrimination of sound changes, was diminished in the children with ASD for the scornful deviant. In addition, the amplitude of the P3a, reflecting involuntary orienting to attention-catching changes, was diminished in the children with ASD for the scornful deviant and tended to be smaller for the sad deviant. These results suggest that prosody processing in ASD is impaired at various levels of neural processing, including deficient pre-attentive discrimination and involuntary orientation to speech prosody.
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Affiliation(s)
- R Lindström
- Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
| | - T Lepistö-Paisley
- Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; Department of Child Neurology, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Helsinki, Finland
| | - R Vanhala
- Department of Child Neurology, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Helsinki, Finland
| | - R Alén
- Department of Child Neurology, Central Finland Central Hospital, Jyväskylä, Finland
| | - T Kujala
- Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
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Aguert M, Laval V, Lacroix A, Gil S, Le Bigot L. Inferring emotions from speech prosody: not so easy at age five. PLoS One 2013; 8:e83657. [PMID: 24349539 PMCID: PMC3857318 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0083657] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/26/2013] [Accepted: 11/13/2013] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Abstract
Previous research has suggested that children do not rely on prosody to infer a speaker's emotional state because of biases toward lexical content or situational context. We hypothesized that there are actually no such biases and that young children simply have trouble in using emotional prosody. Sixty children from 5 to 13 years of age had to judge the emotional state of a happy or sad speaker and then to verbally explain their judgment. Lexical content and situational context were devoid of emotional valence. Results showed that prosody alone did not enable the children to infer emotions at age 5, and was still not fully mastered at age 13. Instead, they relied on contextual information despite the fact that this cue had no emotional valence. These results support the hypothesis that prosody is difficult to interpret for young children and that this cue plays only a subordinate role up until adolescence to infer others' emotions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marc Aguert
- Université de Caen Basse-Normandie, PALM (EA 4649), Caen, France
| | - Virginie Laval
- Université de Poitiers, CeRCA (UMR CNRS 7295), Poitiers, France
| | - Agnès Lacroix
- Université européenne de Bretagne - Rennes 2, CRP2C (EA 1285), Rennes, France
| | - Sandrine Gil
- Université de Poitiers, CeRCA (UMR CNRS 7295), Poitiers, France
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