Auditory processing skills in brainstem level of autistic children: A Review Study

Aims: Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder. Deficit in sensory functions is one of the characteristics of people with autism, and usually these people show abnormality in processing and correct interpretation of auditory information. Also people with Autism show problems in communicating with others. This review article deals with the accurate understanding of Auditory processing skills of autistic children compared to normal children is done to clarify the auditory processing disorder in this group. Materials and methods: This article was prepared by reviewing the articles that have been published so far in the field of electrophysiological evaluations of auditory brainstem in autism spectrum disorder. Scopus, PubMed, Google Scholar, Science Direct databases were searched from 2002 to 2021. Findings: Based on the available findings, disorders are observed in the brainstem electrophysiological responses of patients with ASD compared to the normal group. The results of studies of auditory brainstem evoked responses with click stimuli showed an increase in wave V latency and I-V interpeak latency in ASD subjects compared to normal groups. Studies of brainstem evoked responses with speech stimuli also showed a decrease in amplitude and an increase in latency. Conclusion: The findings show auditory processing disorders in verbal and non-verbal stimuli in people with autism spectrum; however, most studies show more disorders in speech stimuli, which play a very important role in communicating. Speech stimulus processing disorder and speech understanding in these people can be considered as a result of auditory temporal processing disorder at the level of the brain stem and the important role of temporal processing in speech understanding.