BACKGROUND: Patients with autism show clinical features suggestive of abnormal
processing of auditory and other sensory information. We hypothesized that low-functioning
autistic subjects present abnormalities in discriminating simple auditory stimuli at sensory
system preconscious stages of cortical processing. METHODS: To verify our hypothesis, we
used magnetoencephalographic measurements of mismatch field (MMF), which reflects the
detection of a change in the physical characteristics of a repetitive sound. Fourteen patients�…