Abstract
The auditory steady-state response (ASSR) is a result of entrainment of the brain’s oscillatory activity to the frequency and phase of temporally modulated stimuli. Gamma-range ASSRs are utilized to observe the dysfunctions of brain-synchronization abilities in neuropsychiatric and developmental disorders with cognitive symptoms. However, the link between gamma-range ASSRs and cognitive functioning is not clear. We systematically reviewed existing findings on the associations between gamma-range ASSRs and cognitive functions in patients with neuropsychiatric or developmental disorders and healthy subjects. The literature search yielded 1597 articles. After excluding duplicates and assessing eligibility, 22 articles were included. In healthy participants, the gamma-range ASSR was related to cognitive flexibility and reasoning as measured by complex tasks and behavioral indicators of processing speed. In patients with schizophrenia, the studies that reported correlations found a higher ASSR to be accompanied by better performance on short-term memory tasks, long-term/semantic memory, and simple speeded tasks. The main findings indicate that individual differences in the gamma-range ASSR reflect the level of attentional control and the ability to temporary store and manipulate the information, which are necessary for a wide range of complex cognitive activities, including language, in both healthy and impaired populations.
Highlights
An absolute majority of the studies were performed with an aim of auditory steady-state response (ASSR) evaluation in clinical populations and used wide array of tasks to tap into different cognitive functions
Gamma-range ASSRs were associated with the outcomes of short-term and workingmemory tasks, covering both efficiency and timing aspects of the performance, and with the outcomes on tasks aimed at evaluating processing speed
Performance on several tasks to tap cognitive flexibility and reasoning correlated with measurements of gammarange ASSRs, indirectly supporting an association with attentional control/executive functioning and memory
Summary
Understanding the role of temporal brain synchronization in cognitive functioning has been a subject of intense research for many years [1,2]. Brain electrophysiological measures, such as electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG), provide cost-effective, non-invasive techniques to explore the occurrence of neural synchronization and temporal states [3,4]. In this perspective, attention has been drawn to gamma-range (30–80 Hz) activity due to its association with cognitive performance [5,6]. Along with the observed dysfunctions in cognitive performance, the impaired gamma oscillations were frequently reported in different patient groups [14,15]
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