The maturation of auditory cortical evoked responses between (preterm) birth and 14 years of age

Development of the N400 for Word Learning in the First 2 Years of Life: A Systematic Review

The N400 ERP component is a direct neural index of word meaning. Studies show that the N400 component is already present in early infancy, albeit often delayed. Many researchers capitalize on this finding, using the N400 component to better understand how early language acquisition unfolds. However, variability in how researchers quantify the N400 makes it difficult to set clear predictions or build theory. Not much is known about how the N400 component develops in the first 2 years of life in terms of its latency and topographical distributions, nor do we know how task parameters affect its appearance. In the current paper we carry out a systematic review, comparing over 30 studies that report the N400 component as a proxy of semantic processing elicited in infants between 0 and 24 months old who listened to linguistic stimuli. Our main finding is that there is large heterogeneity across semantic-priming studies in reported characteristics of the N400, both with respect to latency and to distributions. With age, the onset of the N400 insignificantly decreases, while its offset slightly increases. We also examined whether the N400 appears different for recently-acquired novel words vs. existing words: both situations reveal heterogeneity across studies. Finally, we inspected whether the N400 was modulated differently with studies using a between-subject design. In infants with more proficient language skills the N400 was more often present or showed itself here with earlier latency, compared to their peers; but no consistent patterns were observed for distribution characteristics of the N400. One limitation of the current review is that we compared studies that widely differed in choice of EEG recordings, pre-processing steps and quantification of the N400, all of which could affect the characteristics of the infant N400. The field is still missing research that systematically tests development of the N400 using the same paradigm across infancy.

Detection Rates of Cortical Auditory Evoked Potentials at Different Sensation Levels in Infants with Sensory/Neural Hearing Loss and Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder

With the introduction of newborn hearing screening, infants are being diagnosed with hearing loss during the first few months of life. For infants with a sensory/neural hearing loss (SNHL), the audiogram can be estimated objectively using auditory brainstem response (ABR) testing and hearing aids prescribed accordingly. However, for infants with auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD) due to the abnormal/absent ABR waveforms, alternative measures of auditory function are needed to assess the need for amplification and evaluate whether aided benefit has been achieved. Cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs) are used to assess aided benefit in infants with hearing loss; however, there is insufficient information regarding the relationship between stimulus audibility and CAEP detection rates. It is also not clear whether CAEP detection rates differ between infants with SNHL and infants with ANSD. This study involved retrospective collection of CAEP, hearing threshold, and hearing aid gain data to investigate the relationship between stimulus audibility and CAEP detection rates. The results demonstrate that increases in stimulus audibility result in an increase in detection rate. For the same range of sensation levels, there was no difference in the detection rates between infants with SNHL and ANSD.

Differential maturation of brain signal complexity in the human auditory and visual system

Brain development carries with it a large number of structural changes at the local level which impact on the functional interactions of distributed neuronal networks for perceptual processing. Such changes enhance information processing capacity, which can be indexed by estimation of neural signal complexity. Here, we show that during development, EEG signal complexity increases from one month to 5 years of age in response to auditory and visual stimulation. However, the rates of change in complexity were not equivalent for the two responses. Infants’ signal complexity for the visual condition was greater than auditory signal complexity, whereas adults showed the same level of complexity to both types of stimuli. The differential rates of complexity change may reflect a combination of innate and experiential factors on the structure and function of the two sensory systems.

Maturation of the long-latency auditory ERP: step function changes at start and end of adolescence

The auditory event-related potential (ERP) is obtained by averaging electrical impulses recorded from the scalp in response to repeated stimuli. Previous work has shown large differences between children, adolescents and adults in the late auditory ERP, raising the possibility that analysis of waveform shape might be useful as an index of brain maturity. We reanalysed auditory ERPs from samples previously described by Albrecht, von Suchodoletz and Uwer (2000) and Uwer, Albrecht and von Suchodoletz (2002), using the intraclass correlation (ICC) as a global measure of similarity of an individual's waveform to a grand average comparison waveform for each age band. Three developmental periods were clearly distinguished: 5 to 12 years, 13 to 16 years, and adulthood. However, within each of these periods, there was no evidence of any developmental progression with age.