Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Essex, United Kingdom.
Neuroimage. 2022 Aug 15;257:119241. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119241. Epub 2022 May 7.
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 was required, the right prefrontal and parietal cortices were more activated than when there was no inhibitory demand. 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.
抑制控制是一种核心执行功能，在婴儿期出现，并在整个儿童期迅速发展。由于方法学的限制，研究婴儿期抑制控制的神经相关性的研究很少。本研究采用功能近红外光谱技术和一种新的触摸屏任务来测量反应抑制，旨在揭示 10 个月大婴儿（N=135）抑制控制的神经基础。我们发现，当需要抑制时，右侧前额叶和顶叶皮层比没有抑制需求时更活跃。这表明，年仅 10 个月大的婴儿的抑制控制得到了与年龄较大的儿童和成人相似的大脑区域的支持。通过这项研究，我们将反应抑制的神经基质定位到生命第一年的年龄界限降低了。
