Investigating and Comparing Language Components in 7-12-Year-Old Cerebral Palsy and Healthy Children by Focusing on the Quantitative Electroencephalography Topographic Maps

Abstract

Abstract Cerebral Palsy (CP) is a movement disorder caused by a non-progressive brain lesion and its symptoms appear in the form of developmental damages. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the Quantitative Electroencephalography (qEEG) signals upon carrying out a speech and language task and to compare the components of language function and common spatial patterns extracted from children with cerebral palsy and healthy ones. In this study, 17 children with CP and 40 healthy children aged from 7 to 12 were studied. In order to evaluate the phonetic, phonological, syntactic, and semantic features of the language in the CP group in comparison to healthy control participants, a Test of Language Development (TOLD) was employed. To examine their electrophysiological signals on the basis of amplitude and frequency of brain waves, as well as brain connectivity across spectral bands, the 16-channel quantitative electroencephalography was used. In addition, the qualitative evaluation and output of the language development test were reported to determine the areas in need of improvement in both healthy and cerebral palsy groups. The results of this study showed that children with cerebral palsy had significant problems in the sub-scales of the language development test as compared to healthy children. It was also observed that children with cerebral palsy scored the lowest score in the grammatical completion subtest. The qEEG-based brain mapping revealed a significant difference in the amplitude of waves and brain connectivity in the area needing improvement between the two groups. Keywords: Cerebral Palsy, Language Development, Pathology of Language and Speech, Brain Mapping. Introduction Speech and language disorders are being widely discussed and identified as possible factors underlying developmental disabilities. As might be expected, children with CP have an increased risk of speech and language disorders .Cerebral Palsy is characterized by an atypical development of movement and posture which is the result of non-progressive disturbance in the prenatal and postnatal periods. It is often linked to developmental issues in musculoskeletal capacity, sensory, cognitive domains and subjects often find difficulty in expressive interactions. One of the main methods to study language-brain relations in Neurolinguistics studies is evaluation of language impairment due to brain lesions. The present study analyzed the Quantitative Electrophysiological (QEEG) signals upon carrying out a speech and language task in subjects with CP, as compared to language functions in typically-developing subjects. The study also extracted common spatial patterns between CP cases and typically-developing children. Materials & Methods In this study, seventeen children with CP and 40 typically-developing children aged 7 to 12 were enrolled. In order to evaluate phonetic and phonological, syntactic and semantic features of language in CP cases in comparison to healthy control subjects, a Test of Language Development was employed. Their electrophysiological signals on the basis of amplitude and frequency of brain waves and also, brain connectivity across spectral bands were measured using a 16-channel quantitative electroencephalography. In addition, to determine areas needing improvement of CP cases and healthy controls, the qualitative evaluation and output of the language development test were reported. Discussion of Results and Conclusions Our findings indicated that phonetic and phonological, syntactic and semantic features of language were significantly impaired in children with CP vs. healthy controls. The grammatical completion (GC) sub-scale was found to be the domain acquiring the least score among CP cases. Moreover, the qEEG-based brain map revealed a significant difference in amplitude and frequency of waves and brain connectivity in area needing improvement state in CP subjects vs. healthy controls (p < 0.05). Although some researches regarding linguistic functions of children with CP have been done in other countries, linguistic features of Persian-speaking children with CP have been highly unveiled in Iran. CP children with speech and language impairment have an increased risk of social communication problems. The present findings may potentially assist clinicians, speech therapists and other professionals in identifying delayed linguistic aspects in CP children and choosing timely and tailored interventions, therapeutic approaches and individualized education plans. In the latter phase, these insights may pave the path for future research to evaluate the usefulness of therapeutic approaches across clinical group so as to support more general communication strategies. Therefore, speech therapy techniques and neuro-technological advances can be practical in devising individualized rehabilitation program.

Keywords

• cerebral palsy
• language development
• pathology of language and speech
• brain mapping