In 43 autistic and 60 nonautistic adults, mismatch negativity and P3a amplitude and latency did not differ between groups, and frontal mismatch negativity amplitude decreased with age similarly in both groups, supporting the parallel aging hypothesis.
Autistic and nonautistic adults did not differ significantly in mismatch negativity (MMN) amplitude or latency in response to auditory deviants.
Autistic and nonautistic adults did not differ significantly in P3a amplitude or latency.
MMN amplitude decreased with age over the frontal site, and this age effect was similar across autistic and nonautistic groups.
No age-related effects were found for MMN latency or for P3a measures in either group.
The findings support the parallel aging hypothesis for automatic auditory change detection in autism.
The study addresses a gap in knowledge about aging in autism, motivated by projected growth of the older autistic population.
This study looked at how the brain automatically notices changes in sounds, and whether this differs between autistic and nonautistic adults of different ages. Autistic people are often described as having a harder time with change, and some theories suggest this could come from differences in how the brain detects and responds to unexpected events. The researchers recorded brain activity (EEG) from 43 autistic adults and 60 nonautistic adults while they passively listened to a series of repeated tones, with occasional slightly higher-pitched tones. The brain responses linked to automatically detecting a change and briefly shifting attention to it did not differ between autistic and nonautistic adults in size or timing. One of these responses, the mismatch negativity, became smaller with age over the front of the head, and this happened to a similar degree in both groups. Other measures showed no age effects. This research suggests that basic, automatic detection of sound changes works similarly in autistic and nonautistic adults and that it ages in a comparable way, consistent with a "parallel aging" idea. This does not mean that autistic people experience change the same way in daily life; the authors note that future work should examine how these brain responses relate to behavioral reactions to change.
Bessé M, Morel-Kohlmeyer S, Houy-Durand E, Prévost P, Tuller L, Bouazzaoui B, et al.. (2026). Aging in Autism: An Event-Related Potentials Study of Auditory Change Detection.. The European journal of neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejn.70719