When mom talks, are infants with ASD listening?

Date:
January 3, 2022
Source:
University of California - San Diego
Summary:
Researchers pinpoint the regions of the brain and neural
mechanisms responsible for normal or impaired development of a
child's response to baby talk and why infants with autism do not
typically respond well.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Motherese is a form of simplified, exaggerated melodic speech that parents
use to communicate with newborns and young toddlers. A horse becomes
horsie; a dog becomes doggie; parents become mama and dada. The tendency
to speak in such short sing-song phrases is universal across cultures.


========================================================================== Previous research has shown that infants prefer to listen to motherese,
more formally known as infant-directed speech, over adult-like speech;
that it more effectively holds their attention and is an important
component of emotional bonding and fosters learning experiences between
child and parents.

An early sign of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in children is a reduced response to motherese speech and challenges in sustained attention to
social information in general. In a new study, published January 3,
2022 in the journal Nature Human Behavior, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine employed a number of techniques
to pinpoint the regions of the brain responsible for a child's response
to baby talk.

"This new study, which combined state-of-the-art brain imaging,
eye-tracking and clinical testing, opens the door toward precision
medicine in autism," said senior author Eric Courchesne, PhD, professor
of neuroscience at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

Courchesne said the approach generates new insights into how the brain
is developing in children with autism related to objective information
about social preference and social attention.

"For the first time, we are seeing what the possible brain impact is for children with autism who fail to pay attention to social information,"
he said.



========================================================================== Typically developing infants prefer motherese to other forms of adult
speech, and previous studies have suggested their brains may process
motherese differently from non-speech sounds. But research is scant
regarding how and why infants with ASD do not consistently respond
to motherese speech and what the long-term consequences might be when
they "tune out." Courchesne, with colleagues at the Autism Center of Excellence at UC San Diego, hypothesized that ASD infants and toddlers experience impaired development of innately driven neural mechanisms that respond to motherese. To investigate, they conducted a series of tests involving 200 datasets from 71 toddlers and 41 datasets from 14 adults:
* Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of sleeping
toddlers,
they measured brain activity to motherese and other forms of social
affective speech.

* They conducted clinical assessments of social and language
development.

* And they utilized eye-tracking technology to measure responses
to females
speaking motherese versus non-speech computer sounds and
images. Earlier research at UC San Diego and elsewhere has shown
that toddlers with ASD show less interest in social activities
and stimuli that would normally attract a young child's attention,
such as watching other children play, sing or dance.

The researchers found that individual differences in early-age social
and language development correlated with a child's neural responses
to speech, and that ASD infants and toddlers with the poorest neural
responses to motherese also displayed the most severe social symptoms,
poorest language outcomes and greatest impairment of behavioral preference
and attention toward motherese.

Conversely, infants and toddlers with typical development showed the
strongest neural responses and affinity to motherese.

Using a computational precision medicine method for integrating data
called similarity network fusion, they correlated eye-gaze patterns to
neural and behavioral responses, further confirming their findings.



==========================================================================
The researchers noted that the superior temporal cortex, a region of
the brain that processes sounds and language, responded more weakly to motherese and emotion speech in ASD children, who also had the poorest
social abilities and lowest eye-tracking attention to motherese.

The opposite was true among typically developing children, who displayed
strong superior temporal neural response to motherese and emotion
speech. A small number of toddlers with ASD showed strong brain activation
and interest in motherese speech, as determined by eye-tracking.

"Our conclusion is that lack of behavioral attention to motherese
speech in ASD involves impaired development of innate temporal cortical
neural systems that normally would automatically respond to parental
emotional speech," said study co-author Karen Pierce, PhD, professor
of neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine and co-director of
Autism Center of Excellence with Courchesne.

"The fact that a few children with autism did show strong brain activation
and good attention to motherese speech is encouraging for two reasons:
First, because it suggests that these particular toddlers with autism
are likely to have good outcomes, a newly discovered and important
subgroup. And second, it suggests a novel avenue for treatment.

The authors said their findings, based upon data-driven, empirical
evidence, may be useful in developing further diagnostic tools and
biomarkers for early identification of ASD and in further clarifying
how ASD affects toddlers in widely and dramatically different ways.

Co-authors include: Yaqiong Xiao, Teresa H. Wen, Lisa Eyler, Disha Goel
and Nathan E. Lewis, all at UC San Diego; Lauren Kupis, University of
Miami; Keith Vaux, UC San Diego Health Physician Network; and Michael
V. Lombardo, Instituto Italiano di Tecnoligia and University of Cambridge.

Funding for this research came, in part, the National Institute on
Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (grant 1R01DC016385); National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH118879, R01MH104446); and the European Research Council (755816).

special promotion Explore the latest scientific research on sleep and
dreams in this free online course from New Scientist -- Sign_up_now_>>> academy.newscientist.com/courses/science-of-sleep-and-dreams ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
University_of_California_-_San_Diego. Original written by Scott
LaFee. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Yaqiong Xiao, Teresa H. Wen, Lauren Kupis, Lisa T. Eyler,
Disha Goel,
Keith Vaux, Michael V. Lombardo, Nathan E. Lewis, Karen Pierce,
Eric Courchesne. Neural responses to affective speech, including
motherese, map onto clinical and social eye tracking profiles in
toddlers with ASD.

Nature Human Behaviour, 2022; DOI: 10.1038/s41562-021-01237-y ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220103145556.htm
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