Rhythm and timing as vulnerabilities in neurodevelopmental disorders

Abstract

Millions of children are impacted by neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), which unfold early in life, have varying genetic etiologies and can involve a variety of specific or generalized impairments in social, cognitive and motor functioning requiring potentially lifelong specialized supports. While specific disorders vary in their domain of primary deficit (e.g. autism spectrum disorder (social), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (attention), developmental coordination disorder (motor) and developmental language disorder (language)), comorbidities between NDDs are common. Intriguingly, many NDDs are associated with difficulties in skills related to rhythm, timing and synchrony though specific profiles of rhythm/timing impairments vary across disorders. Impairments in rhythm/timing may instantiate vulnerabilities for a variety of NDDs and may contribute to both the primary symptoms of each disorder as well as the high levels of comorbidities across disorders. Drawing upon genetic, neural, behavioural and interpersonal constructs across disorders, we consider how disrupted rhythm and timing skills early in life may contribute to atypical developmental cascades that involve overlapping symptoms within the context of a disorder's primary deficits. Consideration of the developmental context, as well as common and unique aspects of the phenotypes of different NDDs, will inform experimental designs to test this hypothesis including via potential mechanistic intervention approaches. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Synchrony and rhythm interaction: from the brain to behavioural ecology’.

The voltage-gated Ca2+ channel subunit α2δ-4 regulates locomotor behavior and sensorimotor gating in mice

“…Abnormal motor behaviors are a common feature of neurodevelopmental disorders including ASD and ADHD [ 28 – 30 ]. Thereofre, we tested motor function of α 2 δ-4 KO mice in the rotarod assay.…”

Species relationships in the extremes and their influence on community stability

“…The potential of tail association and copula tools to reveal previously unsuspected useful information in patterns of synchrony across multiple fields of biology may be great, as demonstrated by our successes in this study. For instance, [42] indicates, in this special issue, that many childhood neurodevelopmental disorders are associated with deficits in rhythm, timing and synchrony. One wonders if diagnosis of disorders may be improved by applying copula statistics to data on synchrony tasks attempted by patients.…”

Inferior Auditory Time Perception in Children With Motor Difficulties

“…Children with dyslexia also have auditory timing deficits (Gooch et al., 2011; Goswami, 2011; Ladányi, Persici, Fiveash, Tillmann, & Gordon, 2020), and MMN latency is delayed in response to duration deviations in children with dyslexia as well as in 2‐month‐old infants who are at risk for specific language impairment relative to healthy controls (Corbera, Escera, & Artigas, 2006; Friedrich et al., 2004). Together, these suggest that a common timing deficit might underlie all of these developmental disorders and relate to their high comorbidity (Falter & Noreika, 2014; Trainor et al., 2018), but further study with a systematic approach is needed to fully understand the role of time processing deficits in explaining comorbidity across developmental disorders (Dalla Bella, Farrugia, et al., 2017; Lense et al., under review).…”