MISMATCH NEGATIVITY (MMN) AS AN INDEX OF AUDITORY SENSORY MEMORY DEFICIT IN CLEFT-PALATE AND CATCH SYNDROME CHILDREN

OUR recent study demonstrated with the brain's automatic change-detect ion response, the mismatch negativity (MMN) of the event-related poten tials (ERPs), that the duration of auditory sensory memory is signific antly shorter in school-age children with CATCH syndrome than in healt hy age-matched controls. One of the characteristic symptoms of this sy ndrome, caused by a microdelection in chromosome 22, is cleft palate. The most common problems in these children, however, are learning diff iculties and, according to our results, it is likely that these proble ms are not due to the dysmorphology of peripheral speech mechanisms on ly but are also caused by CNS dysfunctions. In the present study we sh ow with MMN that auditory sensory memory is also shortened in school-a ge children with cleft palate but without the CATCH syndrome. It has b een shown in previous studies with neuropsychological tests that altho ugh children with cleft palate have language and learning-related prob lems these difficulties are usually less severe than those of CATCH ch ildren. Likewise the present study demonstrates that the auditory sens ory memory trace seems to decay more rapidly in CATCH children than in children with cleft palate. (C) 1998 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.