Sacks Dashiell D, Levin April R, Nelson Charles A, Bosquet Enlow Michelle
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Psychophysiology. 2025 Jan;62(1):e14757. doi: 10.1111/psyp.14757.
The aperiodic "slope" of the EEG power spectrum (i.e., aperiodic exponent, commonly represented as a slope in log-log space) is hypothesized to index the cortical excitatory-inhibitory balance. Slope has been associated with various neurodevelopmental outcomes in older children and adults, as well as with family history of ADHD in infants. Here, we investigate associations among EEG aperiodic slope, temperament, and maternal internalizing (anxiety and depression) symptoms in a large cohort of typically developing infants. A steeper slope was associated with higher scores on the temperament domains of orienting/regulation and surgency but was not associated with negative affectivity. Maternal symptoms did not appear to be directly associated with the slope, but the slope moderated the association between maternal symptoms and temperament. Specifically, a steeper slope was associated with a stronger negative association between maternal internalizing symptoms and infant orienting/regulation. These results demonstrate associations between slope and behavior as early as infancy, which may reflect early differences in the development of global inhibitory networks. Longitudinal research in early childhood is necessary to better understand the nature of these relations during development and their potential impact on later socioemotional outcomes.
脑电图功率谱的非周期性“斜率”（即非周期性指数，通常在对数-对数空间中表示为斜率）被假定为皮质兴奋-抑制平衡的指标。斜率已与大龄儿童和成人的各种神经发育结果相关，也与婴儿的注意力缺陷多动障碍家族史相关。在此，我们在一大群发育正常的婴儿中研究脑电图非周期性斜率、气质和母亲内化（焦虑和抑郁）症状之间的关联。较陡的斜率与定向/调节和外向性气质领域的较高得分相关，但与消极情感性无关。母亲的症状似乎与斜率没有直接关联，但斜率调节了母亲症状与气质之间的关联。具体而言，较陡的斜率与母亲内化症状和婴儿定向/调节之间更强的负相关相关。这些结果表明，早在婴儿期，斜率与行为之间就存在关联，这可能反映了全局抑制网络发育的早期差异。有必要在幼儿期进行纵向研究，以更好地理解发育过程中这些关系的本质及其对后期社会情感结果的潜在影响。
