# The Role of Context in the Neural Processing of Speech in Autism Spectrum Disorder

> **NIH NIH R21** · NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $200,000

## Abstract

Project Summary
This project aims to advance understanding of brain mechanisms contributing to speech processing differences
and related social communication difficulties widely observed in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In ASD, the
most prominent features of speech processing differences include challenges perceiving social and emotional
cues from speech signals, and perception of speech in noisy environments. Such difficulties have been theorized
to relate to differences in context-dependent auditory processing. That is, autistic individuals appear less
adept in using global acoustic and statistical contexts (e.g., the likelihood of one speech sound following a particular
sequence of speech sounds or words) to hone in on important aspects of speech signals and suppress irrelevant
auditory signals (e.g., noise) in everyday speech environments, with important clinical consequences. Critically,
the biological and mechanistic origins of this important functional difference in ASD remain unclear. Recent
studies have demonstrated that in typical development, context-dependent auditory processing is mechanistically
supported by an interaction between top-down modulation and local representations of speech that fine-tune
sensory signals based on expectations computed from auditory history. In this proposal, we test the hypothesis
that the homeostasis (i.e., balance) between top-down and local representations of speech signals is disrupted in
ASD, which manifests system-wise along the neural auditory pathway. We propose a set of multi-level, advanced
and innovative encephalography (EEG) approaches to study how autistic individuals incorporate contextual
information to support speech processing in both fundamental encoding of speech sounds and higher order
processing of continuous speech samples. To establish the clinical relevance of context-dependent auditory
processing, we further test a hypothesis that these brain signatures relate and contribute to key clinical-behavioral
speech and language phenotypes related to the social communication domain of ASD. Results of this study will
provide important mechanistic insight to help unpack the currently insufficiently understood etiology of functional
speech processing difficulties in ASD. As speech processing is crucial in our daily lives (e.g., from the development
of friendships through talking and listening, to workplace communication), understanding the causes and
underlying mechanisms of speech processing differences in ASD has broad clinical-behavioral implications,
essential for the development of effective, mechanistically targeted interventions to improve quality of life. Elicited
with innovative and mechanistically apt experimental paradigms that reflect real-world experiences and clinically-
translatable EEG techniques with clear biological bases, our hypothesized neural markers of context-dependent
auditory processing in ASD has great potential as an objective and robust tool to be implemented ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10973742
- **Project number:** 1R21DC022031-01
- **Recipient organization:** NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Chung Yin Joseph Lau
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $200,000
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-07-01 → 2027-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10973742

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10973742, The Role of Context in the Neural Processing of Speech in Autism Spectrum Disorder (1R21DC022031-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10973742. Licensed CC0.

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