Auditory magnetic responses of healthy newborns

Abstract

We recorded magnetic brain activity from healthy human newborns when they heard frequency changes in an otherwise repetitive sound stream. We were able to record the magnetic counterpart of the mismatch negativity (MMN) previously described only with electric recordings in infants. The results show that these recordings are possible, although still challenging due to the small head size and head movements. The modelling of the neural sources underlying the recorded responses suggests cortical sources in the temporal lobes.

Newborns discriminate novel from harmonic sounds: A study using magnetoencephalography

“…In healthy newborns, the MMN-like component appears with a latency of about 200-300 ms (e.g., Cheour et al, 2002b;Kushnerenko et al, 2002a;Huotilainen et al, 2003). In the present study, however, the first deflection showing the discriminative effect occurred only at around 350 ms after stimulus onset.…”

“…Most frequently, the infant data have been offline filtered with a 1-Hz high-pass filter (e.g. Čeponiene et al, 2002;Cheour et al, 2002a;Kushnerenko et al, 2002aKushnerenko et al, , 2002bHuotilainen et al, 2003;Martynova et al, 2003).…”

“…Recently, several studies showed responses at similar latencies (Lengle et al, 2001;Huotilainen et al, 2003;Cheour et al, 2004;Kujala et al, 2004;Pihko et al, 2004) in recordings of evoked magnetic fields (ERFs).…”

“…It was shown that a mismatch response was elicited both to changes in speech stimuli (e.g., Leppänen et al, 1999;Cheour et al, 2002b) and to changes in pure or complex tones (e.g., Leppänen et al, 1997;Čeponiene et al, 2002;Huotilainen et al, 2003). An oddball paradigm has been used to demonstrate that sleeping newborns are able to learn to discriminate small differences in speech sounds.…”

Electrophysiological signatures: Magnetoencephalographic studies of the neural correlates of language impairment in autism spectrum disorders

“…While there is ERP data on the P3a in children with autism (Lepistö et al, 2005) and indeed magnetic recordings of analogous components in healthy subjects (Huotilainen et al 2003, Alho et al 1998), this remains a promising yet not fully explored line of investigation for MEG in autism.…”