Aging in Autism: An Event-Related Potentials Study of Auditory Change Detection.
- 1Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition et l'Apprentissage (CeRCA), Team "Vieillissement et Psychopathologie de la Mémoire" UMR CNRS 7295, University of Tours, University of Poitiers, France.
- 2Université de Tours, INSERM, Imaging Brain & Neuropsychiatry iBraiN U1253, Tours, France.
- 3Excellence Center for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders, EXAC·T, CHRU de Tours, Tours, France.
Abstract
Autistic individuals are often thought to exhibit reduced tolerance for change, which may stem from atypicalities in sensory processing, particularly in the detection of environmental changes. Within the predictive coding framework, this intolerance may reflect altered generation and updating internal predictions in response to sensory input, leading to increased prediction errors. Mismatch negativity and the P3a component are event-related potentials (ERPs) indexing automatic auditory change detection and involuntary attention shift. While studied in autistic children and young adults, little is known about how these components evolve during aging, an important gap as 21 million autistic adults over 60 are expected by 2050. This study examined mismatch negativity and P3a responses in 43 autistic adults (aged 21-64) and 60 nonautistic adults (aged 20-69) using a passive auditory oddball paradigm with standard (1000 Hz) and deviant (1100 Hz; p = 0.15) tones. Electroencephalography recording revealed no significant differences between autistic and nonautistic individuals on mismatch negativity and P3a amplitude or latency. However, mismatch negativity amplitude decreased with age over frontal site, similarly across both groups. No age-related effects were found for mismatch negativity latency or P3a measures in either group. These findings suggest that, from adulthood onward, the neural mechanisms underlying automatic change detection and preattentional processes are similar in both autistic and nonautistic adults, and that their overall time course of aging appears comparable, supporting the parallel aging hypothesis. Nonetheless, future research should explore how these preserved neural responses relate to behavioral reactivity to change in autism.
Related
- A systematic review of the maturation of selected cortical auditory event-related potentials in passive paradigms: Developmental changes from infancy to early adulthood
- Resting-state EEG spectral characteristics before and after a single auditory integration training session in children with autism spectrum disorder
- Auditory sustained potential as a biomarker of language functioning in children with autism and its implication in clinical trials.
- Auditory nerve phenotypes reveal a myelin-associated subtype of age-related hearing loss
- SLC52A2-Related Riboflavin Transporter Deficiency in Non-Isolated Auditory Neuropathy: Evidence from a Chinese Cohort and a Global Variant Review
BibTeX
@article{besse2026aging,
title = {{Aging in Autism: An Event-Related Potentials Study of Auditory Change Detection.}},
author = {Marine Bessé and Shasha Morel-Kohlmeyer and Emmanuelle Houy-Durand and Philippe Prévost and Laurie Tuller and Badiâa Bouazzaoui and Laurence Taconnat and Julia Capdeville and Lucie Angel and Marie Gomot},
journal = {The European journal of neuroscience},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1111/ejn.70719},
url = {https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42897981},
note = {CC BY-NC},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Aging in Autism: An Event-Related Potentials Study of Auditory Change Detection.
AU - Marine Bessé
AU - Shasha Morel-Kohlmeyer
AU - Emmanuelle Houy-Durand
AU - Philippe Prévost
AU - Laurie Tuller
AU - Badiâa Bouazzaoui
AU - Laurence Taconnat
AU - Julia Capdeville
AU - Lucie Angel
AU - Marie Gomot
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/01
JO - The European journal of neuroscience
DO - 10.1111/ejn.70719
UR - https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42897981
AB - Autistic individuals are often thought to exhibit reduced tolerance for change, which may stem from atypicalities in sensory processing, particularly in the detection of environmental changes. Within the predictive coding framework, this intolerance may reflect altered generation and updating internal predictions in response to sensory input, leading to increased prediction errors. Mismatch negativity and the P3a component are event-related potentials (ERPs) indexing automatic auditory change detection and involuntary attention shift. While studied in autistic children and young adults, little is known about how these components evolve during aging, an important gap as 21 million autistic adults over 60 are expected by 2050. This study examined mismatch negativity and P3a responses in 43 autistic adults (aged 21-64) and 60 nonautistic adults (aged 20-69) using a passive auditory oddball paradigm with standard (1000 Hz) and deviant (1100 Hz; p = 0.15) tones. Electroencephalography recording revealed no significant differences between autistic and nonautistic individuals on mismatch negativity and P3a amplitude or latency. However, mismatch negativity amplitude decreased with age over frontal site, similarly across both groups. No age-related effects were found for mismatch negativity latency or P3a measures in either group. These findings suggest that, from adulthood onward, the neural mechanisms underlying automatic change detection and preattentional processes are similar in both autistic and nonautistic adults, and that their overall time course of aging appears comparable, supporting the parallel aging hypothesis. Nonetheless, future research should explore how these preserved neural responses relate to behavioral reactivity to change in autism.
SN - 0953-816X
SN - 1460-9568
ER -