Lahat Ayelet, Todd Rebecca M, Mahy Caitlin Emma Victoria, Lau Karen, Zelazo Philip David
University of Toronto Toronto, ON, Canada.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2010 Jan 8;3:72. doi: 10.3389/neuro.09.072.2009. eCollection 2009.
This study explored the neurophysiological correlates of executive function (EF) in young children from two different cultural backgrounds. Twenty European-Canadian and 17 Chinese-Canadian 5-year-olds participated in a go/no-go task, during which high-density electroencephalographic (EEG) data were recorded. No cultural group differences were observed in children's behavioral performance on the task, but marked differences were revealed by ERP analyses, which focused on the amplitude and latency of the N2 waveform. Chinese-Canadian children showed larger (i.e., more negative) N2 amplitudes than European-Canadian children on the right side of the scalp on no-go trials, as well as on the left side of the scalp on go trials, and for all children, larger N2 amplitudes were associated with faster median reaction times. Source analyses of the N2 were consistent with the hypothesis that compared to European-Canadian children, Chinese-Canadian children showed more activation in dorsomedial, ventromedial, and (bilateral) ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. These findings reveal that EEG can provide a measure of cultural differences in neurocognitive function that is more sensitive than behavioral data alone; that Chinese-Canadian children show a pattern of hemispheric differentiation in the context of this task than that is more pronounced than that of age-matched European-Canadian children; that the asymmetrically lateralized N2 may be a reliable marker of both effortful inhibition (on the right) and effortful approach (on the left); and that the neural correlates of EF may vary across samples of healthy participants, even in children.
本研究探讨了来自两种不同文化背景的幼儿执行功能（EF）的神经生理学关联。20名欧裔加拿大儿童和17名华裔加拿大儿童参与了一项“停止信号”任务，在此期间记录了高密度脑电图（EEG）数据。在该任务中，未观察到不同文化群体儿童在行为表现上的差异，但事件相关电位（ERP）分析揭示了显著差异，该分析聚焦于N2波形的振幅和潜伏期。在停止信号试验中，华裔加拿大儿童头皮右侧的N2振幅比欧裔加拿大儿童更大（即更负），在执行信号试验中头皮左侧也是如此，而且对所有儿童来说，更大的N2振幅与更快的中位反应时间相关。对N2的源分析与以下假设一致：与欧裔加拿大儿童相比，华裔加拿大儿童在背内侧、腹内侧和（双侧）腹外侧前额叶皮层表现出更多激活。这些发现表明，脑电图能够提供一种比单独行为数据更敏感的神经认知功能文化差异测量方法；华裔加拿大儿童在该任务背景下表现出一种半球分化模式，比年龄匹配的欧裔加拿大儿童更为明显；不对称侧化的N2可能是努力抑制（右侧）和努力趋近（左侧）的可靠标志；并且即使在儿童中，执行功能的神经关联在健康参与者样本中也可能有所不同。
