Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck University of London, London, UK.
Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College, London, London, UK.
Dev Psychobiol. 2024 May;66(4):e22484. doi: 10.1002/dev.22484.
Measures of early neuro-cognitive development that are suitable for use in low-resource settings are needed to enable studies of the effects of early adversity on the developing brain in a global context. These measures should have high acquisition rates and good face and construct validity. Here, we investigated the feasibility of a naturalistic electroencephalography (EEG) paradigm in a low-resource context during childhood. Additionally, we examined the sensitivity of periodic and aperiodic EEG metrics to social and non-social stimuli. We recorded simultaneous 20-channel EEG and eye-tracking in 72 children aged 4-12 years (45 females) while they watched videos of women singing nursery rhymes and moving toys, selected to represent familiar childhood experiences. These measures were part of a feasibility study that assessed the feasibility and acceptability of a follow-up data collection of the South African Safe Passage Study, which tracks environmental adversity and brain and cognitive development from before birth up until childhood. We examined whether data quantity and quality varied with child characteristics and the sensitivity of varying EEG metrics (canonical band power in the theta and alpha band and periodic and aperiodic features of the power spectra). We found that children who completed the EEG and eye-tracking assessment were, in general, representative of the full cohort. Data quantity was higher in children with greater visual attention to the stimuli. Out of the tested EEG metrics, periodic measures in the theta frequency range were most sensitive to condition differences, compared to alpha range measures and canonical and aperiodic EEG measures. Our results show that measuring EEG during ecologically valid social and non-social stimuli is feasible in low-resource settings, is feasible for most children, and produces robust indices of social brain function. This work provides preliminary support for testing longitudinal links between social brain function, environmental factors, and emerging behaviors.
需要适合在资源匮乏环境中使用的早期神经认知发展测量方法，以便在全球范围内研究早期逆境对大脑发育的影响。这些方法应该具有高采集率和良好的表面和结构效度。在这里，我们研究了在儿童时期的资源匮乏环境中使用自然脑电图（EEG）范式的可行性。此外，我们还研究了周期性和非周期性 EEG 指标对社会和非社会刺激的敏感性。我们在 72 名 4-12 岁（45 名女性）儿童观看女性唱童谣和移动玩具的视频时，同时记录了 20 通道 EEG 和眼动追踪，这些视频选择代表了熟悉的儿童体验。这些措施是南非安全通道研究的可行性研究的一部分，该研究从出生前到儿童期跟踪环境逆境以及大脑和认知发育。我们研究了数据数量和质量是否随儿童特征和各种 EEG 指标的敏感性（theta 和 alpha 波段的典型波段功率以及功率谱的周期性和非周期性特征）而变化。我们发现，完成 EEG 和眼动追踪评估的儿童总体上代表了整个队列。对刺激有更多视觉注意力的儿童的数据量更高。在所测试的 EEG 指标中，与 alpha 范围指标以及典型和非典型 EEG 指标相比，theta 频率范围内的周期性指标对条件差异最敏感。我们的结果表明，在资源匮乏的环境中测量生态有效社会和非社会刺激的 EEG 是可行的，对大多数儿童来说是可行的，并产生了强大的社会大脑功能指标。这项工作初步支持了测试社会大脑功能、环境因素和新兴行为之间的纵向联系。
