Language disabilities associated with perinatal brain damage (e.g., premature/very low birthweight (VLBW) populations) may be related to fundamental deficits in processing of rapid auditory information. Accordingly, rapid auditory processing deficits are seen in language impaired, dyslexic, and premature/VLBW populations. This does not seem limited to the auditory modality since deficits in processing rapidly changing visual cues have also been seen in these populations. Overall the evidence suggests that disruptions of key neurodevelopmental events leads to pervasive cross-modal alterations in basic sensory processing, which in turn underlie some disruptions of language development. We have studied rodent models of early brain damage using an array of auditory processing measures. Results consistently show that focal developmental malformations of cortex, and perinatal hypoxic-ischemic insults, are associated with disruptions of rapid auditory processing (e.g., Peiffer et al., SFN, 2003; McClure et al., S...