The neural correlates of inhibitory control in 10-month-old infants: a functional near-infrared spectroscopy study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abigail Fiske ◽  
Carina de Klerk ◽  
Katie Y. K. Lui ◽  
Liam H Collins-Jones ◽  
Alexandra Hendry ◽  
...  

Inhibitory control, a core executive function, emerges in infancy and develops rapidly across childhood. Methodological limitations have meant that studies investigating the neural correlates underlying inhibitory control in infancy are rare. Employing functional near-infrared spectroscopy alongside a novel touchscreen task that measures response inhibition, this study aimed to uncover the neural underpinnings of inhibitory control in 10-month-old infants (N = 135). We found that when inhibition is required, the right prefrontal and parietal cortices were more activated than when there is no inhibitory demand. Further, activation in right prefrontal areas was associated with individual differences in response inhibition performance. This demonstrates that inhibitory control in infants as young as 10 months of age is supported by similar brain areas as in older children and adults. With this study we have lowered the age-boundary for localising the neural substrates of response inhibition to the first year of life.

2022 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xin Zhou ◽  
Elizabeth M. Planalp ◽  
Lauren Heinrich ◽  
Colleen Pletcher ◽  
Marissa DiPiero ◽  
...  

Executive function (EF) is essential to child development, with associated skills beginning to emerge in the first few years of life and continuing to develop into adolescence and adulthood. The prefrontal cortex (PFC), which follows a neurodevelopmental timeline similar to EF, plays an important role in the development of EF. However, limited research has examined prefrontal function in young children due to limitations of currently available neuroimaging techniques such as functional resonance magnetic imaging (fMRI). The current study developed and applied a multimodal Go/NoGo task to examine the EF component of inhibitory control in children 4–10 years of age. Cortical activity was measured using a non-invasive and child-friendly neuroimaging technique – functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Children’s response accuracy and reaction times were captured during the fNIRS session and compared with responses obtained using the standardized assessments from NIH Toolbox cognition battery. Results showed significant correlations between the behavioral measures during the fNIRS session and the standardized EF assessments, in line with our expectations. Results from fNIRS measures demonstrated a significant, age-independent effect of inhibitory control (IC) in the right PFC (rPFC), and an age-dependent effect in the left orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC), consistent with results in previous studies using fNIRS and fMRI. Thus, the new task designed for fNIRS was suitable for examining IC in young children, and results showed that fNIRS measures can reveal prefrontal IC function.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph F. Geissler ◽  
Jörn Schneider ◽  
Christian Frings

AbstractOptimal mental workload plays a key role in driving performance. Thus, driver-assisting systems that automatically adapt to a drivers current mental workload via brain–computer interfacing might greatly contribute to traffic safety. To design economic brain computer interfaces that do not compromise driver comfort, it is necessary to identify brain areas that are most sensitive to mental workload changes. In this study, we used functional near-infrared spectroscopy and subjective ratings to measure mental workload in two virtual driving environments with distinct demands. We found that demanding city environments induced both higher subjective workload ratings as well as higher bilateral middle frontal gyrus activation than less demanding country environments. A further analysis with higher spatial resolution revealed a center of activation in the right anterior dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. The area is highly involved in spatial working memory processing. Thus, a main component of drivers’ mental workload in complex surroundings might stem from the fact that large amounts of spatial information about the course of the road as well as other road users has to constantly be upheld, processed and updated. We propose that the right middle frontal gyrus might be a suitable region for the application of powerful small-area brain computer interfaces.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Gruber ◽  
C. Debracque ◽  
L. Ceravolo ◽  
K. Igloi ◽  
B. Marin Bosch ◽  
...  

AbstractVariations of the vocal tone of the voice during speech production, known as prosody, provide information about the emotional state of the speaker. In recent years, functional imaging has suggested a role of both right and left inferior frontal cortices in attentive decoding and cognitive evaluation of emotional cues in human vocalizations. Here, we investigated the suitability of functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to study frontal lateralization of human emotion vocalization processing during explicit and implicit categorization and discrimination. Participants listened to speech-like but semantically meaningless words spoken in a neutral, angry or fearful tone and had to categorize or discriminate them based on their emotional or linguistic content. Behaviorally, participants were faster to discriminate than to categorize and they processed the linguistic content of stimuli faster than their emotional content, while an interaction between condition (emotion/word) and task (discrimination/categorization) influenced accuracy. At the brain level, we found a four-way interaction in the fNIRS signal between condition, task, emotion and channel, highlighting the involvement of the right hemisphere to process fear stimuli, and of both hemispheres to treat anger stimuli. Our results show that fNIRS is suitable to study vocal emotion evaluation in humans, fostering its application to study emotional appraisal.


2022 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sungmin Cho ◽  
Won Kee Chang ◽  
Jihong Park ◽  
Seung Hyun Lee ◽  
Jongseung Lee ◽  
...  

AbstractPrism Adaptation (PA) is used to alleviate spatial neglect. We combined immersive virtual reality with a depth-sensing camera to develop virtual prism adaptation therapy (VPAT), which block external visual cues and easily quantify and monitor errors than conventional PA. We conducted a feasibility study to investigate whether VPAT can induce behavioral adaptations by measuring after-effect and identifying which cortical areas were most significantly activated during VPAT using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Fourteen healthy subjects participated in this study. The experiment consisted of four sequential phases (pre-VPAT, VPAT-10°, VPAT-20°, and post-VPAT). To compare the most significantly activated cortical areas during pointing in different phases against pointing during the pre-VPAT phase, we analyzed changes in oxyhemoglobin concentration using fNIRS during pointing. The pointing errors of the virtual hand deviated to the right-side during early pointing blocks in the VPAT-10° and VPAT-20° phases. There was a left-side deviation of the real hand to the target in the post-VPAT phase, demonstrating after-effect. The most significantly activated channels during pointing tasks were located in the right hemisphere, and possible corresponding cortical areas included the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and frontal eye field. In conclusion, VPAT may induce behavioral adaptation with modulation of the dorsal attentional network.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hui Li ◽  
Dandan Wu ◽  
Jinfeng Yang ◽  
Sha Xie ◽  
Jiutong Luo ◽  
...  

This study aims to examine the neural correlates of cognitive shifting during the Dimensional Change Card Sort Task (DCCS) task with functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Altogether 49 children completed the DCCS tasks, and 25 children (Mage = 68.66, SD = 5.3) passing all items were classified into the Switch group. Twenty children (Mage = 62.05, SD = 8.13) committing more than one perseverative errors were grouped into the Perseverate group. The Switch group had Brodmann Area (BA) 9 and 10 activated in the pre-switch period and BA 6, 9, 10, 40, and 44 in the post-switch period. In contrast, the Perseverate group had BA 9 and 10 activated in the pre-switch period and BA 8, 9, 10 in the post-switch period. The general linear model results afford strong support to the “V-shape curve” hypothesis by identifying a significant decrease–increase cycle in BA 9 and 44, the neural correlations of cognitive shifting.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document