Event-related brain potentials to change in the frequency and temporal structure of sounds in typically developing 5-6-year-old children.

The brain's ability to recognize different acoustic cues (e.g., frequency changes in rapid temporal succession) is important for speech perception and thus for successful language development.

Noun Case Suffix Use by Children with Specific Language Impairment: An Examination of Finnish.

Finnish-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI, = 15, age = 5;2), a group of same-age typically developing peers (TD-A, = 15, age = 5;2) and a group of younger typically developing children (TD-Y, = 15, age = 3;8) were compared in their use of accusative, partitive, and genitive case noun suffixes. The children with SLI were less accurate than both groups of TD children in case marking, suggesting that their difficulties with agreement extend to grammatical case. However, these children were also less accurate in making the phonological changes in the stem needed for suffixation.

Mutations in the two ribosomal RNA genes in mitochondrial DNA among Finnish children with hearing impairment.

Background: Mutations in the two MT-RNR genes in mitochondrial DNA can cause hearing impairment that presents with variable severity and age of onset. In order to study the prevalence of mutations in MT-RNR1 and MT-RNR2 genes among Finnish children, we studied a ten-year cohort of hearing impaired children born in Northern Finland.

Methods: We studied children, who had been born in Northern Finland in 1993-2002 and who had been ascertained to have hearing impairment by 31 December 2007.

Childhood hearing impairment in northern Finland, etiology and additional disabilities.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence and etiology of hearing impairment (HI) in Finnish children and to evaluate the frequency and type of additional disabilities among children with HI.

Methods: Subjects consisted of 214 children with mild to profound HI ascertained until the age of 10 years. They belonged to the birth cohort spanning the years 1993-2002 in northern Finland.

WFS1 mutations in hearing-impaired children.

Objective: Mutations in the WFS1 gene can cause Wolfram syndrome or nonsyndromic hearing impairment (HI). The objective of this study was to ascertain the presence of mutations in WFS1 among children with HI from unknown causes.

Design: We screened 105 Finnish children with HI for mutations in exon 8 in WFS1.

[Assistive communication devices improve life management].

The development of information technology has enabled communication for severely disabled persons who previously were isolated even from their immediate neighborhood. Applications of information technology, particularly the Internet, make contacts possible even when spoken communication is impossible. Successful communication will support the personal autonomy of a severely disabled person and also relieves the anxiety of the family members, especially at the final stage of a progressive disease.

Audiological follow-up of children with the m.1555A>G mutation in mitochondrial DNA.

The age at onset and the severity of hearing impairment (HI) varies widely among subjects and within families with the m.1555A>G mutation in mitochondrial DNA. We examined prospectively the hearing of 19 children in three nuclear families of a pedigree with m.

Children with specific language impairment in Finnish: the use of tense and agreement inflections.

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) vary widely in their ability to use tense/agreement inflections depending on the type of language being acquired, a fact that current accounts of SLI have tried to explain. Finnish provides an important test case for these accounts because: (1) verbs in the first and second person permit null subjects whereas verbs in the third person do not; and (2) tense and agreement inflections are agglutinating and thus one type of inflection can appear without the other. Probes were used to compare the verb inflection use of Finnish-speaking children with SLI, and both age-matched and younger typically developing children.

Atypical perceptual narrowing in prematurely born infants is associated with compromised language acquisition at 2 years of age.

Background: Early auditory experiences are a prerequisite for speech and language acquisition. In healthy children, phoneme discrimination abilities improve for native and degrade for unfamiliar, socially irrelevant phoneme contrasts between 6 and 12 months of age as the brain tunes itself to, and specializes in the native spoken language. This process is known as perceptual narrowing, and has been found to predict normal native language acquisition.

Connexin 26 mutations and nonsyndromic hearing impairment in northern Finland.

Objective: The aims of the present study were to evaluate the role of the gap junction protein beta-2 gene (GJB2), encoding connexin 26 (Cx26), in children with moderate to profound prelingual nonsyndromic sensorineural hearing impairment (HI) and to investigate the carrier frequencies of the GJB2 gene mutations in a control population in Northern Finland.

Methods: Mutation analysis was performed by direct sequencing and carrier detection by conformation sensitive gel electrophoresis further confirmed by direct sequencing.

Results: Cx26 mutations were found in 15 of 71 (21.