Neurophysiological evidence for cortical discrimination impairment of prosody in Asperger syndrome

Asperger syndrome (AS), belonging to the autism spectrum of disorders, is one of the pervasive developmental disorders. Individuals with AS usually have normal development of formal speech but pronounced problems in perceiving and producing speech prosody. The present study addressed the discrimination of speech prosody in AS by recording the mismatch negativity (MMN) and behavioural responses to natural utterances with different emotional connotations. MMN responses were abnormal in the adults with AS in several ways. In these subjects, fewer significantly elicited MMNs, diminished MMN amplitudes, as well as prolonged latencies were found. In addition, the MMN generator loci differed between the subjects with AS and control subjects. These findings were predominant over the right cerebral hemisphere. These results show impaired neurobiological basis for speech-prosody processing at an early, pre-attentive auditory discrimination stage in AS.