Russian scientists have found out for the first time the cause of speech disorders in people with autism

, Feb. 17 (Reporter Dong Yingxuan) Moscow State University of Psychology and Education has discovered for the first time in the world the causes of speech disorders in people with autism associated with the work of the auditory cortical layer of the brain. These findings are profoundly changing the understanding of the autism disorder and may form the basis of new approaches to rehabilitation. The findings were published recently in the journal Molenecular Autism.
moscow State University of Psychology and Education, the main cause of speech retardation in people with autism is considered to be a barrier to communication with adults. However, their latest study reveals for the first time the important neurophysiological factor holding back speech development -- the slow response of the auditory cortical cortical layer in the left hemisphere of the brain.
medical research has found that the left hemisphere's auditory cortical cortical layer, unlike the right hemisphere, handles complex sound stimuli in a different way, providing a higher speed of signal analysis, so the left hemisphere dominates the processing of speech. "Visual information is static, and speech is constantly changing, so the auditory channels of information require extremely high processing speed," said lead researcher Yelena Olekhova of the Center for Brain Magnetic Tracing at Moscow State University of Psychology and Education. In order for a word to be recognized by the brain, the auditory cortical layer must have time to process each acoustic element of a word. Even adults have difficulty sensing familiar but not native languages with their ears.
But the researchers explained that it is not possible to test the speed of responses to speech by assessing responses to speech: the brain's response to speech signals depends largely on skills and attention, which are significantly lower in children with autism than in the general child. Therefore, in the experiment, the researchers selected only one of the acoustic properties of a hearing speech - the frequency of sound, i.e. the repeatability of a short period of time.
Yelena Orekhova says the auditory cortical cortical layer in the left and right hemispheres handles periodic signals differently, and only the left hemisphere processes them in a way that is important for speech perception and learning. By providing children with autism and normal children with the most neutral periodic sound possible - regular clicks - we were able to assess the speed of response of the auditory cortical cortical layer in both hemispheres. The results showed that the nerve response of children with autism in the left hemisphere auditory cortical cortical layer was slow compared to that of children in the control group, while the neural response in the right hemisphere was no different from that of normal children. She says the findings are the first to show that autism affects low levels of speech processing.