No Differences in Auditory Steady-State Responses in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Typically Developing Children.

Abstract

Auditory steady-state response (ASSR) has been studied as a potential biomarker for abnormal auditory sensory processing inautism spectrum disorder (ASD), with mixed results. Motivated by prior somatosensory findings of group differences in inter-trial coherence (ITC) between ASD and typically developing (TD) individuals at twice the steady-state stimulation frequency, we examined ASSR at 25 and 50 as well as 43 and 86Hz in response to 25-Hz and 43-Hz auditory stimuli, respectively, using magnetoencephalography. Data were recorded from 22 ASD and 31 TD children, ages 6-17years. ITC measures showed prominent ASSRs at the stimulation and double frequencies, without significant group differences. These results do not support ASSR as a robust ASD biomarkerof abnormal auditory processing in ASD. Furthermore, the previously observed atypical double-frequency somatosensory response in ASD did not generalize to the auditory modality.Thus, the hypothesis about modality-independent abnormal local connectivityin ASD was not supported.