Altered evoked responses for motor-related words in children with upper limb motor impairments

•Children with upper limb impairments exhibited altered MMN responses to verbs semantically relating to the impaired limb.•MMN responses elicited by other verbs remained intact, thus suggesting semantic specificity of the observed effect.•Our findings can be interpreted in light of embodied cognition theory and shed light on cognitive development in motor impairments. Obstetric brachial plexus palsy (OBPP) and amyoplasia, the classical type of arthrogryposis multiplex congenita, manifest themselves as highly limited mobility of the upper limb. At the same time, according to the embodiment cognition theories, the motor impairments might lead to the alteration of cognitive functions in OBPP/amyoplasia patients. In the current study, we examined whether OBPP/amyoplasia children exhibit altered processing of motor-related verbs. We conducted a case-control study using clinical population and control children. Oddball series were used to elicit mismatch negativity (MMN) EEG responses. The series consisted of limb-related verbs (deviant stimuli) and matched pseudowords (standard stimuli). 27 patients and 32 control children were included in the analysis. We showed that MMN waveforms differed between OBPP/amyoplasia children and their control peers in the frontal and temporal electrodes when the stimuli contained hand-related verbs. In particular, the MMN peak latency in the OBPP/amyoplasia children was significantly delayed as compared with the healthy controls. At the same time, neither series with leg-related verbs nor series of pseudowords resulted in statistically significant differences. Our findings suggest altered processing of hand-related verbs in OBPP/amyoplasia children with hand-related disabilities. Our results contribute to the growing evidence in support of the theory of embodied cognition, which proposes that various domains of cognition are shaped by bodily interactions with the environment.