Auditory Mismatch Negativity in Youth Affected by Autism Spectrum Disorder With and Without Attenuated Psychosis Syndrome

Abstract

The present study investigates the differences in auditory mismatch negativity (MMN) parameters given in a sample of young subjects with autism spectrum disorder (ASD, n = 37) with or without co-occurrent attenuated psychosis syndrome (APS). Our results show that ASD individuals present an MMN decreased amplitude and prolonged latency, without being influenced by concurrent APS. Additionally, when correlating the MMN indexes to clinical features, in the ASD + APS group, we found a negative correlation between the severity of autistic symptoms and the MMN latency in both frequency (f-MMN r = -0.810; p < 0.0001) and duration (d-MMN r = -0.650; p = 0.006) deviants. Thus, our results may provide a more informative characterization of the ASD sub-phenotype when associated with APS, highlighting the need for further longitudinal investigations.

Keywords: EEG; attenuated psychosis syndrome; autism spectrum disorder; mismatch negativity; pediatric.

Figure 1

Electrical scalp map topographies (for each group, at the MMN grandaverage peak; upper panels portion), grandaverage waveforms at Fz channel (middle panels portion) and Global Field Power (GFP, a global measure of electrical field strength; middle panels portion) in the three groups (ASD, ASD+APS, and HC) for each condition, d-MMN (left panel) and f-MMN (right panel). As expected, MMN has a fronto-central distribution over the scalp midline, with strongest electrical field responses around Fz channel (indicated as a white circle in the scalp map images). ASD: Autism Spectrum disorder; ASD+APS: Autism Spectrum Disorder + Attenuated Psychosis Syndrome; HC: Healthy Controls.

Figure 2

Scatterplots of relations between f-MMN latency and ADOS-2 CSS in ASD (left panel) and ASD+APS (right panel). In the panels, the continuous lines are the linear regression lines, the dashed lines indicate the 95% Confidence Intervals for mean, and the empty circles represent the value for each autistic subject. ADOS-2 CSS: Autism Diagnostic Observation ScheduleSecond Edition, calibrated severity score; ASD: Autism Spectrum disorder; ASD+APS: Autism Spectrum Disorder + Attenuated Psychosis Syndrome; f-MMN: frequency-deviant tones mismatch negativity.