Cognitive control deficits in adolescents born with very low birth weight (≤ 1500 g): Evidence from dichotic listening

The objective of the paper is to explore bottom‐up auditory and top‐down cognitive processing abilities as part of long‐term outcome assessment of preterm birth. Fifty‐five adolescents (age 13–15) born with very low birth weight (VLBW) were compared to 80 matched controls born to term, using three consonant‐vowel dichotic listening (DL) instruction conditions (non‐forced, forced‐right and forced‐left). DL scores were correlated with cortical gray matter thickness derived from T1‐weighted structural MRI volumes using FreeSurfer to examine group differences also in the neural correlates of higher cognitive processes. While showing normal bottom‐up processing, VLBW adolescents displayed impaired top‐down controlled conflict processing related to significant cortical thickness differences in left superior temporal gryus and anterior cingulate cortex. Preterm birth with VLBW induces fundamental changes in brain function and structure posing a risk for long‐term neurocognitive impairments. Deficits emerge in situations of increasing cognitive conflict and can be related to measures of executive functions as well as morphology.     

Mother‐child interaction is associated with neurocognitive outcome in extremely low gestational age children

Early mother‐child interaction is one of the factors suggested to have an impact on neurocognitive development of extremely low gestational age (ELGA) children. Our aim was to examine associations of mother‐child interaction with neurocognitive outcome, neurological impairments and neonatal brain injuries in ELGA children. A prospective study of 48 ELGA children, born before 28 gestational weeks (26.3 ± 1.2 weeks, birth weight 876 g ± 194 g), and 16 term controls. Brain MRI was performed at term‐equivalent age. At two years of corrected age, the mother‐child interaction was assessed in a structured play situation using the Erickson Scales and Mutually Responsive Orientation Scales. Neurocognitive outcome was assessed with Griffiths Mental Developmental Scales (GMDS) and Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development ‐ Third Edition (BSID‐III) and with Hempel neurological examination. Among ELGA children, higher quality of dyadic relationship and maternal sensitivity, responsiveness, and supportiveness were associated with positive neurocognitive outcome measured both with GMDS and BSID‐III (adjusted p < 0.05). This association remained after adjusting for mother's educational level. Neurological impairments at two years, white matter or gray matter abnormalities in MRI at term‐equivalent age, and grade III‐IV intraventricular hemorrhage during the neonatal period were not associated with mother‐child interaction. This study emphasizes the importance of the quality of mother‐child interaction after extremely preterm birth for neurocognitive development. Neonatal brain injury and neurological impairments were not associated with worse parent‐child interaction after two years.     

Mapping gray matter development: Implications for typical development and vulnerability to psychopathology

Recent studies with brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have scanned large numbers of children and adolescents repeatedly over time, as their brains develop, tracking volumetric changes in gray and white matter in remarkable detail. Focusing on gray matter changes specifically, here we explain how earlier studies using lobar volumes of specific anatomical regions showed how different lobes of the brain matured at different rates. With the advent of more sophisticated brain mapping methods, it became possible to chart the dynamic trajectory of cortical maturation using detailed 3D and 4D (dynamic) models, showing spreading waves of changes evolving through the cortex. This led to a variety of time-lapse films revealing characteristic deviations from normal development in schizophrenia, bipolar illness, and even in siblings at genetic risk for these disorders. We describe how these methods have helped clarify how cortical development relates to cognitive performance, functional recovery or decline in illness, and ongoing myelination processes. These time-lapse maps have also been used to study effects of genotype and medication on cortical maturation, presenting a powerful framework to study factors that influence the developing brain.     

Differences in brain morphology and working memory capacity across childhood

Working memory (WM) skills are closely associated with learning progress in key areas such as reading and mathematics across childhood. As yet, however, little is known about how the brain systems underpinning WM develop over this critical developmental period. The current study investigated whether and how structural brain correlates of components of the working memory system change over development. Verbal and visuospatial short‐term and working memory were assessed in 153 children between 5.58 and 15.92 years, and latent components of the working memory system were derived. Fractional anisotropy and cortical thickness maps were derived from T1‐weighted and diffusion‐weighted MRI and processed using eigenanatomy decomposition. There was a greater involvement of the corpus callosum and posterior temporal white matter in younger children for performance associated with the executive part of the working memory system. For older children, this was more closely linked with the thickness of the occipitotemporal cortex. These findings suggest that increasing specialization leads to shifts in the contribution of neural substrates over childhood, moving from an early dependence on a distributed system supported by long‐range connections to later reliance on specialized local circuitry. Our findings demonstrate that despite the component factor structure being stable across childhood, the underlying brain systems supporting working memory change. Taking the age of the child into account, and not just their overall score, is likely to be critical for understanding the nature of the limitations on their working memory capacity.     

Childhood socioeconomic status and the pace of structural neurodevelopment: accelerated,delayed, or simply different?

Socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with children’s brain and behavioral development. Several theories propose that early experiences of adversity or low SES can alter the pace of neurodevelopment during childhood and adolescence. These theories make contrasting predictions about whether adverse experiences and low SES are associated with accelerated or delayed neurodevelopment. We contextualize these predictions within the context of normative development of cortical and subcortical structure and review existing evidence on SES and structural brain development to adjudicate between competing hypotheses. Although none of these theories are fully consistent with observed SES-related differences in brain development, existing evidence suggests that low SES is associated with brain structure trajectories more consistent with a delayed or simply different developmental pattern than an acceleration in neurodevelopment.     

Paralimbic Gray Matter Reductions in Incarcerated Adolescent Females with Psychopathic Traits

Psychopathy-related paralimbic and limbic structural brain abnormalities have been implicated in incarcerated adult and adolescent male samples. However, there have been few neuroimaging studies of psychopathic traits in females in general and no studies from incarcerated female youth in particular. Here we present the first study to examine the relationship between brain gray matter volumes and psychopathic traits (assessed using the Psychopathy Checklist-Youth Version [PCL-YV]) in a sample of maximum-security incarcerated female adolescents (N?=?39; mean age?=?17.6 years). Consistent with male samples, regional gray matter volumes were negatively related to psychopathic traits in female youth offenders in limbic and paralimbic areas, including orbitofrontal cortex, parahippocampal cortex, temporal poles, and left hippocampus. These results provide evidence that psychopathic traits manifest similar neural abnormalities across sex and age.     

Splenium development and early spoken language in human infants

The association between developmental trajectories of language‐related white matter fiber pathways from 6 to 24 months of age and individual differences in language production at 24 months of age was investigated. The splenium of the corpus callosum, a fiber pathway projecting through the posterior hub of the default mode network to occipital visual areas, was examined as well as pathways implicated in language function in the mature brain, including the arcuate fasciculi, uncinate fasciculi, and inferior longitudinal fasciculi. The hypothesis that the development of neural circuitry supporting domain‐general orienting skills would relate to later language performance was tested in a large sample of typically developing infants. The present study included 77 infants with diffusion weighted MRI scans at 6, 12 and 24 months and language assessment at 24 months. The rate of change in splenium development varied significantly as a function of language production, such that children with greater change in fractional anisotropy (FA) from 6 to 24 months produced more words at 24 months. Contrary to findings from older children and adults, significant associations between language production and FA in the arcuate, uncinate, or left inferior longitudinal fasciculi were not observed. The current study highlights the importance of tracing brain development trajectories from infancy to fully elucidate emerging brain–behavior associations while also emphasizing the role of the splenium as a key node in the structural network that supports the acquisition of spoken language.     

Parental socioeconomic status and the neural basis of arithmetic: differential relations to verbal and visuo‐spatial representations

We examined the relation of parental socioeconomic status (SES) to the neural bases of subtraction in school‐age children (9‐ to 12‐year‐olds). We independently localized brain regions subserving verbal versus visuo‐spatial representations to determine whether the parental SES‐related differences in children's reliance on these neural representations vary as a function of math skill. At higher SES levels, higher skill was associated with greater recruitment of the left temporal cortex, identified by the verbal localizer. At lower SES levels, higher skill was associated with greater recruitment of right parietal cortex, identified by the visuo‐spatial localizer. This suggests that depending on parental SES, children engage different neural systems to solve subtraction problems. Furthermore, SES was related to the activation in the left temporal and frontal cortex during the independent verbal localizer task, but it was not related to activation during the independent visuo‐spatial localizer task. Differences in activation during the verbal localizer task in turn were related to differences in activation during the subtraction task in right parietal cortex. The relation was stronger at lower SES levels. This result suggests that SES‐related differences in the visuo‐spatial regions during subtraction might be based in SES‐related verbal differences.     

The Effects of Socio‐Economic Status on Infant Attention

The development of visual attention is a key component of cognitive functioning in infancy and childhood. By the time children in poverty reach school, deficits in attention are readily apparent; however, when these attention delays manifest is unknown. The current study tested attention longitudinally at 6, 9 and 12 months in infants from high‐socio‐economic status (SES) and low‐SES families. Infants were tested in a free play attention task in both simple and complex conditions, and two measures each of attention and inattention were scored. High‐SES infants showed greater attention overall and greater increases in attention when the stimuli were more complex. Low‐SES infants showed higher inattention than their high‐SES peers at all ages and were less likely to modulate their attention on the basis of stimulus complexity. Thus, by 6 months of age, low‐income infants already show deficits in attention. Results are discussed in terms of adaptability, implications for social development and attention interventions. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Importance of the Default Mode Network in Creativity—A Structural MRI Study

Anecdotal reports as well as behavioral studies have suggested that creative performance benefits from unconscious processes. So far, however, little is known about how creative ideas arise from the brain. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the neural correlates of creativity by means of structural MRI research. Given that unconscious and less controlled processes are important in creative thinking, structural brain research may find a positive correlation between well‐established creativity measures and cortical thickness in brain structures of the default mode network (i.e., the counterpart of the cognitive control network). Individuals performed the Alternative Uses task by which an individual's cognitive flexibility and the average uniqueness and average creativity of a participant's ideas were assessed. We computed optimized voxel‐based‐morphometry (VBM) to explore the correlation between inter‐individual differences in creativity and inter‐individual differences in gray matter volume. For all creativity measures, a positive correlation was found between creative performance and gray matter volume of the default mode network. These findings support the idea that the default mode network is important in creativity, and provide neurostructural support for the idea that unconscious forms of information processing are important in creativity. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Different early rearing experiences have long‐term effects on cortical organization in captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Consequences of rearing history in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) have been explored in relation to behavioral abnormalities and cognition; however, little is known about the effects of rearing conditions on anatomical brain development. Human studies have revealed that experiences of maltreatment and neglect during infancy and childhood can have detrimental effects on brain development and cognition. In this study, we evaluated the effects of early rearing experience on brain morphology in 92 captive chimpanzees (ages 11–43) who were either reared by their mothers (n = 46) or in a nursery (n = 46) with age‐group peers. Magnetic resonance brain images were analyzed with a processing program (BrainVISA) that extracts cortical sulci. We obtained various measurements from 11 sulci located throughout the brain, as well as whole brain gyrification and white and grey matter volumes. We found that mother‐reared chimpanzees have greater global white‐to‐grey matter volume, more cortical folding and thinner grey matter within the cortical folds than nursery‐reared animals. The findings reported here are the first to demonstrate that differences in early rearing conditions have significant consequences on brain morphology in chimpanzees and suggests potential differences in the development of white matter expansion and myelination.     

Feasibility of Undertaking Off‐Site Infant Eye‐Tracking Assessments of Neuro‐Cognitive Functioning in Early‐Intervention Centres

Recent work suggests that differences in functional brain development are already identifiable in 6‐ to 9‐month‐old infants from low socio‐economic status (SES) backgrounds. Investigation of early SES‐related differences in neuro‐cognitive functioning requires the recruitment of large and diverse samples of infants, yet it is often difficult to persuade low‐SES parents to come to a university setting. One solution is to recruit infants through early intervention children's centres (CCs). These are often located in areas of high relative deprivation to support young children. Given the increasing portability of eye‐tracking equipment, assessment of large clusters of infants could be undertaken in centres by suitably trained early intervention staff. Here, we report on a study involving 174 infants and their parents, carried out in partnership with CCs, exploring the feasibility of this approach. We report the processes of setting up the project and participant recruitment. We report the diversity of sample obtained on the engagement of CC staff in training and the process of assessment itself. We report the quality of the data obtained, and the levels of engagement of parents and infants. We conclude that this approach has great potential for recruiting large and diverse samples worldwide, provides sufficiently reliable data and is engaging to staff, parents and infants. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Socioeconomic status and hippocampal volume in children and young adults

An individual's socioeconomic status (SES) is often viewed as a proxy for a host of environmental influences. SES disparities have been linked to variance in brain structures particularly the hippocampus, a neural substrate of learning and memory. However, it is unclear whether the association between SES and hippocampal volume is similar in children and adults. We investigated the relationship between hippocampal volume and SES in a group of children (n = 31, age 8–12 years) and a group of young adults (n = 32, age 18–25 years). SES was assessed with four indicators that loaded on a single factor, therefore a composite SES scores was used in the main analyses. Hippocampal volume was measured using manual demarcation on high resolution structural images. SES was associated with hippocampal volume in the children, but not in adults, suggesting that in childhood, but not adulthood, SES‐related environmental factors influence hippocampal volume. In addition, hippocampal volume, but not SES, was associated with scores on a memory task, suggesting that net effects of postnatal environmental factors, captured by SES, are more distal determinants of memory performance than hippocampal volume. Longitudinal investigation of the association between SES, hippocampal volume and cognitive functioning may further our understanding of the putative neural mechanisms underlying SES‐related environmental effects on cognitive development.     

Cerebral blood flow in 5‐ to 8‐month‐olds: Regional tissue maturity is associated with infant affect

Infancy is marked by rapid neural and emotional development. The relation between brain function and emotion in infancy, however, is not well understood. Methods for measuring brain function predominantly rely on the BOLD signal; however, interpretation of the BOLD signal in infancy is challenging because the neuronal‐hemodynamic relation is immature. Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) provides a context for the infant BOLD signal and can yield insight into the developmental maturity of brain regions that may support affective behaviors. This study aims to elucidate the relations among rCBF, age, and emotion in infancy. One hundred and seven mothers reported their infants' (infant age M ± SD = 6.14 ± 0.51 months) temperament. A subsample of infants completed MRI scans, 38 of whom produced usable perfusion MRI during natural sleep to quantify rCBF. Mother‐infant dyads completed the repeated Still‐Face Paradigm, from which infant affect reactivity and recovery to stress were quantified. We tested associations of infant age at scan, temperament factor scores, and observed affect reactivity and recovery with voxel‐wise rCBF. Infant age was positively associated with CBF in nearly all voxels, with peaks located in sensory cortices and the ventral prefrontal cortex, supporting the formulation that rCBF is an indicator of tissue maturity. Temperamental Negative Affect and recovery of positive affect following a stressor were positively associated with rCBF in several cortical and subcortical limbic regions, including the orbitofrontal cortex and inferior frontal gyrus. This finding yields insight into the nature of affective neurodevelopment during infancy. Specifically, infants with relatively increased prefrontal cortex maturity may evidence a disposition toward greater negative affect and negative reactivity in their daily lives yet show better recovery of positive affect following a social stressor.     

Social experiences and daily routines of African American infants in different socioeconomic contexts

Sixty-two 3- to 4-month-old African American infants from lower, middle, and upper socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds were each observed in naturalistic contexts for 12 hr. The social experiences of infants in the 3 groups were similar in many ways: Infants from all backgrounds slept and were vocalized to for similar amounts of time. However, infants in the upper SES families engaged in more self-play, vocalized less, fussed less, had fewer but longer naps, and fewer but longer bouts of social interaction than did infants in the middle- and lower SES families. Infants in the upper SES families also received more verbal affection and soothing responses to their fussing and crying than did the other infants, whereas infants in the lower SES families interacted more with extended kin than did infants in the upper SES families. These results underscore the need to study African American families in a variety of socioeconomic contexts because families in more advantaged circumstances may greatly differ from those who are more disadvantaged, especially in terms of reliance on extended kin as caregivers.     

Neural correlates of perceptual narrowing in cross‐species face‐voice matching

Integrating the multisensory features of talking faces is critical to learning and extracting coherent meaning from social signals. While we know much about the development of these capacities at the behavioral level, we know very little about the underlying neural processes. One prominent behavioral milestone of these capacities is the perceptual narrowing of face–voice matching, whereby young infants match faces and voices across species, but older infants do not. In the present study, we provide neurophysiological evidence for developmental decline in cross‐species face–voice matching. We measured event‐related brain potentials (ERPs) while 4‐ and 8‐month‐old infants watched and listened to congruent and incongruent audio‐visual presentations of monkey vocalizations and humans mimicking monkey vocalizations. The ERP results indicated that younger infants distinguished between the congruent and the incongruent faces and voices regardless of species, whereas in older infants, the sensitivity to multisensory congruency was limited to the human face and voice. Furthermore, with development, visual and frontal brain processes and their functional connectivity became more sensitive to the congruence of human faces and voices relative to monkey faces and voices. Our data show the neural correlates of perceptual narrowing in face–voice matching and support the notion that postnatal experience with species identity is associated with neural changes in multisensory processing ( Lewkowicz & Ghazanfar, 2009 ).     

Early adversity in rural India impacts the brain networks underlying visual working memory

There is a growing need to understand the global impact of poverty on early brain and behavioural development, particularly with regard to key cognitive processes that emerge in early development. Although the impact of adversity on brain development can trap children in an intergenerational cycle of poverty, the massive potential for brain plasticity is also a source of hope: reliable, accessible, culturally agnostic methods to assess early brain development in low resource settings might be used to measure the impact of early adversity, identify infants for timely intervention and guide the development and monitor the effectiveness of early interventions. Visual working memory (VWM) is an early marker of cognitive capacity that has been assessed reliably in early infancy and is predictive of later academic achievement in Western countries. Here, we localized the functional brain networks that underlie VWM in early development in rural India using a portable neuroimaging system, and we assessed the impact of adversity on these brain networks. We recorded functional brain activity as young children aged 4–48 months performed a VWM task. Brain imaging results revealed localized activation in the frontal cortex, replicating findings from a Midwestern US sample. Critically, children from families with low maternal education and income showed weaker brain activity and poorer distractor suppression in canonical working memory areas in the left frontal cortex. Implications of this work are far‐reaching: it is now cost‐effective to localize functional brain networks in early development in low‐resource settings, paving the way for novel intervention and assessment methods.     

Brain structure mediates the association between socioeconomic status and attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder

Low socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with greater risk for symptoms of attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). One mechanism through which SES may confer risk for ADHD is by influencing brain structure. Alterations to cortical thickness, surface area and subcortical volume have been associated with low SES and with the presence of ADHD across multiple studies. The current study examined whether cortical thickness, surface area or subcortical volume mediate the associations between SES and ADHD in youth 3–21 years old (N = 874) from the Pediatric Imaging, Neurocognition and Genetics Study. Freesurfer was used to estimate cortical thickness, surface area and subcortical volume from structural magnetic resonance imaging. Parents reported on demographics, family SES, ADHD diagnoses and the presence of child attention problems. Statistical mediation was assessed using a bootstrap resampling procedure. Controlling for parental ADHD, child age, gender, birth weight and scanner, children in low SES families were more likely to be in the ADHD group. Consistent with previous reports in this sample, low SES was associated with reduced surface area across the frontal lobe and reduced subcortical volume in the amygdala, cerebellum, hippocampus and basal ganglia. Of these regions, a significant indirect effect of SES on ADHD status through subcortical volume was observed for the left cerebellum (95% confidence interval: 0.004, 0.022), the right cerebellum (95% confidence interval: 0.006, 0.025), and the right caudate (95% confidence interval: 0.002, 0.022). Environmentally mediated changes in the cerebellum and the caudate may be neurodevelopmental mechanisms explaining elevated risk of ADHD in children in low SES families.     

The origins of word learning: Brain responses of 3‐month‐olds indicate their rapid association of objects and words

The present study explored the origins of word learning in early infancy. Using event‐related potentials (ERP) we monitored the brain activity of 3‐month‐old infants when they were repeatedly exposed to several initially novel words paired consistently with each the same initially novel objects or inconsistently with different objects. Our results provide strong evidence that these young infants extract statistic regularities in the distribution of the co‐occurrences of objects and words extremely quickly. The data suggest that this ability is based on the rapid formation of associations between the neural representations of objects and words, but that the new associations are not retained in long‐term memory until the next day. The type of brain response moreover indicates that, unlike in older infants, in 3‐month‐olds a semantic processing stage is not involved. Their ability to combine words with meaningful information is caused by a primary learning mechanism that enables the formation of proto‐words and acts as a precursor for the acquisition of genuine words.