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Updated: Oct 9, 2025
Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations
Published on: July 1, 2015
Evaluating the use of cortical entrainment to measure atypical speech processing: A systematic review
Joseph Palana1, Sophie Schwartz2, Helen Tager-Flusberg2
1Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, 64 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA, 02215, USA; Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, Division of Developmental Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston Children's Hospital, 1 Autumn Street, Boston, MA, 02215, USA.
Background:
Cortical entrainment has emerged as a promising means for measuring continuous speech processing in young, neurotypical adults. However, its utility for capturing atypical speech processing has not been systematically reviewed.
Objectives:
Synthesize evidence regarding the merit of measuring cortical entrainment to capture atypical speech processing and recommend avenues for future research.
Method:
We systematically reviewed publications investigating entrainment to continuous speech in populations with auditory processing differences.
Results:
In the 25 publications reviewed, most studies were conducted on older and/or hearing-impaired adults, for whom slow-wave entrainment to speech was often heightened compared to controls. Research conducted on populations with neurodevelopmental disorders, in whom slow-wave entrainment was often reduced, was less common. Across publications, findings highlighted associations between cortical entrainment and speech processing performance differences.
Conclusions:
Measures of cortical entrainment offer a useful means of capturing speech processing differences and future research should leverage them more extensively when studying populations with neurodevelopmental disorders.
