Altered human voice processing in the frontal cortex and a developmental language delay in 3- to 5-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder

The inferior frontal and superior temporal areas in the left hemisphere are crucial for human language processing. In the present study, we investigated the magnetic mismatch field (MMF) evoked by voice stimuli in 3- to 5-year-old typically developing (TD) children and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using child-customized magnetoencephalography (MEG). The children with ASD exhibited significantly decreased activation in the left superior temporal gyrus compared with the TD children for the MMF amplitude. If we classified the children with ASD according to the presence of a speech onset delay (ASD - SOD and ASD - NoSOD, respectively) and compared them with the TD children, both ASD groups exhibited decreased activation in the left superior temporal gyrus compared with the TD children. In contrast, the ASD - SOD group exhibited increased activity in the left frontal cortex (i.e., pars orbitalis) compared with the other groups. For all children with ASD, there was a significant negative correlation between the MMF amplitude in the left pars orbitalis and language performance. This investigation is the first to show a significant difference in two distinct MMF regions in ASD – SOD children compared with TD children.