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Updated: Jul 5, 2026
Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations
Published on: July 1, 2015
Influences of perinatal dioxin load to visual motion and oddball stimuli examined with an EEG and MEG analysis
Nico A M Schellart1, Dik Reits
1Department of Medical Physics, Academic Medical Centre, University of Amsterdam, PO Box 22660, 1100 DD Amsterdam, The Netherlands. N.A.Schellart@amc.uva.nl
Objective:
With MEG and EEG the effect of perinatal dioxin load of 38 healthy 7- to 12-year-old children was studied to assess possible disturbances of visual development.
Methods:
Latencies and amplitudes of the motion (N2 with subcomponents) and oddball responses (N200 and P3b) were analysed after age correction.
Results:
With increasing load, latencies increased and the amplitudes of the oddball components tended to be reduced. The latency increase between the high- and low-loaded children was about 13 ms (P<0.004) and the oddball response showed an amplitude decrease of 12% (P=0.009).
Conclusions:
It may be concluded that, during the end-80s/early-90s, exposure to background levels in industrialized regions seems to have resulted in small underdevelopment or damage to visual motion processing and visual cognition.
Significance:
Since dioxin pollution by incinerators still exists in many regions in developing countries and also still, although at a smaller scale, in the industrialized world, perinatal loads of similar magnitude and possibly more as measured in this study may occur and as a consequence might affect the developing brain.
