Deviant ERP response to spoken non-words among adolescents exposed to cocaine in utero

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Developmental Psychology
• Linguistics

Background:

• Prenatal cocaine exposure (PCE) is linked to language development concerns.
• Previous studies observed impaired language skills in children with PCE compared to non-exposed peers.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effects of PCE on speech processing ability in adolescents using event-related potentials (ERPs).
• To examine cortical functioning differences between prenatally cocaine-exposed and non-drug-exposed adolescents.

Main Methods:

• Prospective longitudinal study following participants since birth.
• Used event-related potentials (ERPs) to assess auditory speech processing in 107 PCE and 46 non-drug-exposed (NDE) 13-year-old adolescents.
• Analyzed neural responses to auditorily presented non-words.

Main Results:

• PCE and NDE groups exhibited differences in early sensory/phonemic processing (N1/P2 components).
• Atypical neural responses were observed in higher-level phonological processing (N2 component) in the PCE group.
• Differences were also noted in late linguistic/memory processing components (P600) between groups.

Conclusions:

• Adolescents with PCE demonstrate atypical neural responses to spoken language stimuli.
• These atypical responses occur during both low-level phonological processing and later stages of spoken language comprehension.
• Findings highlight potential long-term impacts of PCE on auditory and language processing pathways.