Persistent post-concussion symptoms include neural auditory processing in young children.

Aim: Difficulty understanding speech following concussion is likely caused by auditory processing impairments. We hypothesized that concussion disrupts pitch and phonetic processing of a sound, cues in understanding a talker.

Patients & methods/results: We obtained frequency following responses to a syllable from 120 concussed and 120 control. Encoding of the fundamental frequency (F0), a pitch cue and the first formant (F1), a phonetic cue, was poorer in concussed children. The F0 reduction was greater in the children assessed within 2 weeks of their injuries.

Conclusion: Concussions affect auditory processing. Results strengthen evidence of reduced F0 encoding in children with concussion and call for longitudinal study aimed at monitoring the recovery course with respect to the auditory system.