Wienke Annika Susann, Mathes Birgit
Bremer Initiative to Foster Early Childhood Development (BRISE), Faculty for Human and Health Sciences, University of Bremen, 28359 Bremen, Germany.
Brain Sci. 2024 May 30;14(6):560. doi: 10.3390/brainsci14060560.
Developmental changes in functional neural networks are sensitive to environmental influences. This EEG study investigated how infant brain responses relate to the social context that their families live in. Event-related potentials of 255 healthy, awake infants between six and fourteen months were measured during a passive auditory oddball paradigm. Infants were presented with 200 standard tones and 48 randomly distributed deviants. All infants are part of a longitudinal study focusing on families with socioeconomic and/or cultural challenges (Bremen Initiative to Foster Early Childhood Development; BRISE; Germany). As part of their familial socioeconomic status (SES), parental level of education and infant's migration background were assessed with questionnaires. For 30.6% of the infants both parents had a low level of education (≤10 years of schooling) and for 43.1% of the infants at least one parent was born abroad. The N2-P3a complex is associated with unintentional directing of attention to deviant stimuli and was analysed in frontocentral brain regions. Age was utilised as a control variable. Our results show that tone deviations in infants trigger an immature N2-P3a complex. Contrary to studies with older children or adults, the N2 amplitude was more positive for deviants than for standards. This may be related to an immature superposition of the N2 with the P3a. For infants whose parents had no high-school degree and were born abroad, this tendency was increased, indicating that facing multiple challenges as a young family impacts on the infant's early neural development. As such, attending to unexpected stimulus changes may be important for early learning processes. Variations of the infant N2-P3a complex may, thus, relate to early changes in attentional capacity and learning experiences due to familial challenges. This points towards the importance of early prevention programs.
功能性神经网络的发育变化对环境影响很敏感。这项脑电图研究调查了婴儿大脑反应与他们家庭所处社会环境之间的关系。在被动听觉oddball范式中，测量了255名6至14个月大健康、清醒婴儿的事件相关电位。向婴儿呈现200个标准音调以及48个随机分布的偏差音调。所有婴儿都是一项纵向研究的一部分，该研究聚焦于面临社会经济和/或文化挑战的家庭（不来梅促进幼儿发展倡议；BRISE；德国）。作为其家庭社会经济地位（SES）的一部分，通过问卷评估了父母的教育水平和婴儿的移民背景。30.6%的婴儿父母双方教育水平较低（≤10年 schooling），43.1%的婴儿至少有一位父母出生在国外。N2 - P3a复合波与对偏差刺激的无意注意力指向有关，并在前额中央脑区进行了分析。年龄被用作控制变量。我们的结果表明，婴儿的音调偏差会引发不成熟的N2 - P3a复合波。与对大龄儿童或成年人的研究相反，偏差音调的N2波幅比对标准音调的更正向。这可能与N2与P3a的不成熟叠加有关。对于父母没有高中学历且出生在国外的婴儿，这种趋势更为明显，表明作为年轻家庭面临多种挑战会影响婴儿的早期神经发育。因此，关注意外的刺激变化可能对早期学习过程很重要。婴儿N2 - P3a复合波的变化可能与由于家庭挑战导致的注意力能力和学习经历的早期变化有关。这表明早期预防项目的重要性。
