Auditory brainstem response to speech in children with high functional autism spectrum disorder

Auditory brainstem response (ABR) provides useful information about the auditory brainstem pathway. However, there is little known about the subcortical speech processing in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The aim of the present study was to investigate the subcortical speech processing in children with high functioning ASD. Twenty-eight children with ASD, with a mean age of 14.36 ± 1.86, and 28 typically developing (TD) children, with a mean age of 14.99 ± 1.92, were selected from Rofeydeh Rehabilitation Hospital (Tehran, Iran), and speech ABR (sABR) with a 40 ms synthetic /da/ syllable stimulus was recorded. There was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of age and IQ. Latencies of all waves in sABR and duration of V-A complex were significantly longer in children with ASD than in TD children. It was concluded that patients with ASD have deficits in the temporal neural encoding of speech at the brainstem level. Further studies are needed to generalize this result.