Down Syndrome Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Down Syndrome, including details on education, symptoms, treatment, information.

Delayed auditory processing underlying stimulus detection in Down syndrome.

Pekkonen E, Osipova D, Sauna-Aho O, Arvio M

Department of Neurology, University of Helsinki, Finland. eero.pekkonen@hus.fi

Down syndrome (DS) is characterized by intellectual disability and development of dementia that are attributed to similar neuropathological features as observed in Alzheimer's disease (AD). The aim of this study was to investigate whether DS patients have similar impairment of preattentive auditory processing as observed in AD. Sinusoidal tones were presented to DS patients and healthy controls, and evoked auditory evoked fields (AEF) were measured with a whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG) system. Patients with DS had significantly delayed and attenuated N100m, and delayed but not attenuated P50m responses over both hemispheres. Present results indicate that preattentive auditory processing underlying stimulus detection is impaired in DS. Given that anticholinergic drugs modulate AEFs, degeneration of cholinergic system in DS could contribute to the damaged auditory processing.

Published 17 April 2007 in Neuroimage, 35(4): 1547-50.
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