Department of Radiology, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada; Child and Adolescent Imaging Research Program, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada; Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada; Hotchkiss Brain Institute, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Department of Radiology, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada; Child and Adolescent Imaging Research Program, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada; Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Dev Cogn Neurosci. 2018 Apr;30:200-211. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2018.03.007. Epub 2018 Mar 20.
Children acquire attention skills rapidly during early childhood as their brains undergo vast neural development. Attention is well studied in the adult brain, yet due to the challenges associated with scanning young children, investigations in early childhood are sparse. Here, we examined the relationship between age, attention and functional connectivity (FC) during passive viewing in multiple intrinsic connectivity networks (ICNs) in 60 typically developing girls between 4 and 7 years whose sustained, selective and executive attention skills were assessed. Visual, auditory, sensorimotor, default mode (DMN), dorsal attention (DAN), ventral attention (VAN), salience, and frontoparietal ICNs were identified via Independent Component Analysis and subjected to a dual regression. Individual spatial maps were regressed against age and attention skills, controlling for age. All ICNs except the VAN showed regions of increasing FC with age. Attention skills were associated with FC in distinct networks after controlling for age: selective attention positively related to FC in the DAN; sustained attention positively related to FC in visual and auditory ICNs; and executive attention positively related to FC in the DMN and visual ICN. These findings suggest distributed network integration across this age range and highlight how multiple ICNs contribute to attention skills in early childhood.
儿童在幼儿期大脑经历广泛的神经发育时，会迅速掌握注意力技能。在成人大脑中，注意力已得到充分研究，但由于扫描幼儿相关的挑战，幼儿期的研究仍然很少。在这里，我们研究了 60 名 4 至 7 岁的正常发育女孩在被动观察期间，年龄、注意力与功能连接（FC）之间的关系。通过独立成分分析（ICA）识别出视觉、听觉、感觉运动、默认模式（DMN）、背侧注意（DAN）、腹侧注意（VAN）、突显和额顶叶网络（ICN），并对其进行了双回归分析。个体空间图谱与年龄和注意力技能进行回归，同时控制年龄因素。除了 VAN 之外，所有 ICN 都显示出与年龄相关的 FC 增加区域。在控制年龄因素后，注意力技能与不同网络的 FC 相关：选择性注意力与 DAN 中的 FC 呈正相关；持续性注意力与视觉和听觉 ICN 中的 FC 呈正相关；执行注意力与 DMN 和视觉 ICN 中的 FC 呈正相关。这些发现表明在这个年龄段内存在分布式网络整合，并强调了多个 ICN 如何为幼儿期的注意力技能做出贡献。
