Department of Pediatrics & Neonatology, Emory University School of Medicine & Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Atlanta, GA, USA.
The Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, OH, USA.
Brain Behav. 2023 Nov;13(11):e3253. doi: 10.1002/brb3.3253. Epub 2023 Oct 2.
Parents often use sensory stimulation during early-life interactions with infants. These interactions, including gazing, rocking, or singing, scaffold child development. Previous studies have examined infant neural processing during highly controlled sensory stimulus presentation paradigms.
In this study, we investigated infant behavioral and neural responsiveness during a mother-child social interaction during which the mother provided infant stimulation with a progressive increase in the number of sensory modalities.
We prospectively collected and analyzed video-coded behavioral interactions and electroencephalogram (EEG) frontal asymmetry (FAS) from infants (n = 60) at 2-4 months born at ≥ 34 weeks gestation. As the number of sensory modalities progressively increased during the interaction, infant behaviors of emotional connection in facial expressiveness, sensitivity to mother, and vocal communication increased significantly. Conversely, infant FAS for the entire cohort did not change significantly. However, when we accounted for infant irritability, both video-coded behaviors and EEG FAS markers of infant responsiveness increased across the interaction in the non-irritable infants. The non-irritable infants (49%) demonstrated positive FAS, indicating readiness to engage with, rather than to withdraw from, multisensory but not unisensory interactions with their mothers.
These results suggest that multisensory input from mothers is associated with greater infant neural approach state and highlight the importance of infant behavioral state during neural measures of infant responsiveness.
父母在与婴儿的早期互动中经常使用感官刺激。这些互动，包括注视、摇晃或唱歌，为儿童的发展提供了支持。以前的研究已经检查了婴儿在高度受控的感官刺激呈现范式下的神经处理。
在这项研究中，我们调查了母亲与孩子进行社会互动期间婴儿的行为和神经反应，在此期间，母亲通过逐渐增加感官模式的数量来为婴儿提供刺激。
我们前瞻性地收集并分析了来自 2-4 个月大（≥34 周妊娠）婴儿的视频编码行为互动和脑电图（EEG）前对称性（FAS）（n=60）。随着互动中感官模式数量的逐渐增加，婴儿在面部表情、对母亲的敏感性和声音交流方面的情感联系行为显著增加。相反，整个队列的婴儿 FAS 没有显著变化。然而，当我们考虑到婴儿的烦躁程度时，在非烦躁婴儿中，整个互动过程中的视频编码行为和 EEG FAS 婴儿反应指标都显著增加。非烦躁婴儿（49%）表现出正 FAS，这表明他们准备与母亲进行多感官互动，而不是回避多感官互动。
这些结果表明，母亲的多感官输入与婴儿更大的神经接近状态有关，并强调了婴儿行为状态在婴儿反应的神经测量中的重要性。
