St John Ashley M, Kao Katie, Chita-Tegmark Meia, Liederman Jacqueline, Grieve Philip G, Tarullo Amanda R
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University;
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University.
J Vis Exp. 2017 May 3(123):55596. doi: 10.3791/55596.
Despite the importance of social interactions for infant brain development, little research has assessed functional neural activation while infants socially interact. Electroencephalography (EEG) power is an advantageous technique to assess infant functional neural activation. However, many studies record infant EEG only during one baseline condition. This protocol describes a paradigm that is designed to comprehensively assess infant EEG activity in both social and nonsocial contexts as well as tease apart how different types of social inputs differentially relate to infant EEG. The within-subjects paradigm includes four controlled conditions. In the nonsocial condition, infants view objects on computer screens. The joint attention condition involves an experimenter directing the infant's attention to pictures. The joint attention condition includes three types of social input: language, face-to-face interaction, and the presence of joint attention. Differences in infant EEG between the nonsocial and joint attention conditions could be due to any of these three types of input. Therefore, two additional conditions (one with language input while the experimenter is hidden behind a screen and one with face-to-face interaction) were included to assess the driving contextual factors in patterns of infant neural activation. Representative results demonstrate that infant EEG power varied by condition, both overall and differentially by brain region, supporting the functional nature of infant EEG power. This technique is advantageous in that it includes conditions that are clearly social or nonsocial and allows for examination of how specific types of social input relate to EEG power. This paradigm can be used to assess how individual differences in age, affect, socioeconomic status, and parent-infant interaction quality relate to the development of the social brain. Based on the demonstrated functional nature of infant EEG power, future studies should consider the role of EEG recording context and design conditions that are clearly social or nonsocial.
尽管社交互动对婴儿大脑发育至关重要，但很少有研究评估婴儿在社交互动时的功能性神经激活情况。脑电图（EEG）功率是评估婴儿功能性神经激活的一种有利技术。然而，许多研究仅在一种基线条件下记录婴儿的脑电图。本方案描述了一种范式，旨在全面评估婴儿在社交和非社交环境中的脑电图活动，并梳理不同类型的社会输入与婴儿脑电图之间的差异关系。受试者内范式包括四种受控条件。在非社交条件下，婴儿观看电脑屏幕上的物体。联合注意条件涉及实验者引导婴儿注意图片。联合注意条件包括三种类型的社会输入：语言、面对面互动和联合注意的存在。非社交条件和联合注意条件下婴儿脑电图的差异可能归因于这三种输入中的任何一种。因此，又增加了两个条件（一个是实验者藏在屏幕后面时的语言输入条件，另一个是面对面互动条件），以评估婴儿神经激活模式中的驱动情境因素。代表性结果表明，婴儿脑电图功率因条件而异，总体上以及在不同脑区都存在差异，这支持了婴儿脑电图功率的功能性本质。该技术的优势在于它包括了明确的社交或非社交条件，并允许研究特定类型的社会输入与脑电图功率之间的关系。这种范式可用于评估年龄、情感、社会经济地位和亲子互动质量等个体差异如何与社会大脑的发育相关。基于已证明的婴儿脑电图功率的功能性本质，未来的研究应考虑脑电图记录背景的作用，并设计明确的社交或非社交条件。
