We investigate the possible effects on the evolution of perturbations in the
inflationary epoch due to short distance physics. We introduce a suitable non
local action for the inflaton field, suggested by Noncommutative Geometry, and
obtained by adopting a generalized star product on a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker
background. In particular, we study how the presence of a length scale where
spacetime becomes noncommutative affects the gaussianity and isotropy
properties of fluctuations, and the corresponding effects on the Cosmic
Microwave Background spectrum.Comment: Published version, 16 page