Lloyd-Fox, S;
Begus, K;
Halliday, D;
Pirazzoli, L;
Blasi, A;
Papademetriou, M;
Darboe, MK;
... Elwell, CE; + view all
(2016)
Cortical specialisation to social stimuli from the first days to the second year of life: A rural Gambian cohort.
Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
, 25
pp. 92-104.
10.1016/j.dcn.2016.11.005.
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Abstract
Brain and nervous system development in human infants during the first 1000 days (conception to two years of age) is critical, and compromised development during this time (such as from under nutrition or poverty) can have life-long effects on physical growth and cognitive function. Cortical mapping of cognitive function during infancy is poorly understood in resource-poor settings due to the lack of transportable and low-cost neuroimaging methods. Having established a signature cortical response to social versus non-social visual and auditory stimuli in infants from 4 to 6 months of age in the UK, here we apply this functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) paradigm to investigate social responses in infants from the first postnatal days to the second year of life in two contrasting environments: rural Gambian and urban UK. Results reveal robust, localized, socially selective brain responses from 9 to 24 months of life to both the visual and auditory stimuli. In contrast at 0–2 months of age infants exhibit non-social auditory selectivity, an effect that persists until 4–8 months when we observe a transition to greater social stimulus selectivity. These findings reveal a robust developmental curve of cortical specialisation over the first two years of life.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Cortical specialisation to social stimuli from the first days to the second year of life: A rural Gambian cohort |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.dcn.2016.11.005 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2016.11.005 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| Keywords: | fNIRS, Infancy, Low- and middle-income countries, Nutrition, Poverty, Social cognition |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Med Phys and Biomedical Eng |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10025136 |
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