Centre for Interdisciplinary Brain Research, Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, P.O. Box 35, FI-40014, Jyväskylä, Finland; Faculty of Science, University of Amsterdam, 1012 WX, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, Aalto University School of Science, Espoo, Finland.
Neuroimage. 2022 Sep;258:119371. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119371. Epub 2022 Jun 11.
Sensory processing during development is important for the emerging cognitive skills underlying goal-directed behavior. Yet, it is not known how auditory processing in children is related to their cognitive functions. Here, we utilized combined magneto- and electroencephalographic (M/EEG) measurements in school-aged children (6-14y) to show that child auditory cortical activity at ∼250 ms after auditory stimulation predicts the performance in inhibition tasks. While unaffected by task demands, the amplitude of the left-hemisphere activation pattern was significantly correlated with the variability of behavioral response time. Since this activation pattern is typically not present in adults, our results suggest divergent brain mechanisms in adults and children for consistent performance in auditory-based cognitive tasks. This difference can be explained as a shift in cortical resources for cognitive control from sensorimotor associations in the auditory cortex of children to top-down regulated control processes involving (pre)frontal and cingulate areas in adults.
发展过程中的感觉处理对于目标导向行为所必需的新兴认知技能很重要。然而，目前尚不清楚儿童的听觉处理如何与其认知功能相关。在这里，我们利用在校儿童（6-14 岁）的脑磁图和脑电图（M/EEG）联合测量，表明听觉刺激后约 250 毫秒时的儿童听觉皮质活动可预测抑制任务的表现。虽然不受任务要求的影响，但左半球激活模式的振幅与行为反应时间的可变性显著相关。由于这种激活模式在成年人中通常不存在，我们的结果表明，在一致的听觉认知任务中，成年人和儿童的大脑机制存在差异。这种差异可以解释为儿童听觉皮层中用于认知控制的皮质资源从感觉运动关联转移到涉及前额叶和扣带回区域的自上而下调节控制过程。
