TY  - JOUR
A1  - Bartha-Doering, Lisa
A1  - Alexopoulos, Johanna
A1  - Giordano, Vito
A1  - Stelzer, Lisa
A1  - Kainz, Theresa
A1  - Benavides-Varela, Silvia
A1  - Wartenburger, Isabell
A1  - Klebermass-Schrehof, Katrin
A1  - Olischar, Monika
A1  - Seidl, Rainer Otis
A1  - Berger, Angelika
T1  - Absence of neural speech discrimination in preterm infants at term-equivalent age
JF  - Developmental cognitive neuroscience : a journal for cognitive, affective and social developmental neuroscience
N2  - Children born preterm are at higher risk to develop language deficits. Auditory speech discrimination deficits may be early signs for language developmental problems. The present study used functional near-infrared spectroscopy to investigate neural speech discrimination in 15 preterm infants at term-equivalent age compared to 15 full term neonates. The full term group revealed a significantly greater hemodynamic response to forward compared to backward speech within the left hemisphere extending from superior temporal to inferior parietal and middle and inferior frontal areas. In contrast, the preterm group did not show differences in their hemodynamic responses during forward versus backward speech, thus, they did not discriminate speech from nonspeech. Groups differed significantly in their responses to forward speech, whereas they did not differ in their responses to backward speech. The significant differences between groups point to an altered development of the functional network underlying language acquisition in preterm infants as early as in term-equivalent age.
KW  - Near-infrared spectroscopy
KW  - Preterm birth
KW  - Newborn infants
KW  - Language development
KW  - Speech discrimination
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2019.100679
SN  - 1878-9293
SN  - 1878-9307
VL  - 39
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Oxford
ER  -