Passive perception of auditory stimuli in healthy and mild mentally retarded adolescents from Northern Russia

Abstract

Event-related potentials (ERPs) during passive perception of auditory stimuli were studied using the oddball paradigm in healthy and mild mentally retarded adolescents. The study involved 25 subjects aged 11–15 (13.1 ± 1.4) years from Northern Russia, including Arctic regions. The peak latency of the difference wave for deviant and standard stimuli in frontal central derivation was 129 ± 21 ms in the healthy children, and the mean amplitude was–2.6 ± 1.3 μV. In the mentally retarded group, a negative peak of the difference wave was observed only in 9 out of 13 adolescents, its latency was more than in the healthy adolescents (156 ± 29 ms), and the mean amplitude was–2.1 ± 1.4 μV. Differences in perception of deviant and standard stimuli were observed in the healthy adolescents, in particular, along the central line. In the adolescents with mental disorders, there was no significant difference in the fronto-central and central derivations. A discriminant analysis of the amplitudes of ERP components observed in the fronto-central derivations in response to deviant stimuli and the difference in amplitude between ERPs evoked in the fronto-central derivation by standard and deviant stimuli differentiated the adolescents with and without mental disorders. Based on the findings, ERP components in the oddball paradigm were assumed to provide potential markers of disorders in mental development.