Poster #16 - Comparison of EEG Potentials Related to Auditory and Visual Active Retrieval in Children

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Biological Processes: Neuroscience and Genetics

Integrative Statement

Brain imaging studies in adults showed that selective retrieval from memory of different types of sensory information (visual, tactile or auditory) is supported by common mechanisms engaging the midventrolateral prefrontal cortex and the posterior association cortical areas (Kostopoulos & Petrides, 2016). Does this similarity between sensory modalities also exist in the developing brain? It has been shown recently in children that visual active retrieval was associated with a fronto-central negativity at around 400 ms (Simard & Cadoret, 2018). The purpose of this study was to compare children’s brain activity in auditory and visual retrieval. Twelve typically developing children (9.5 years; 6 girls) performed a visual retrieval task in which they had to retrieve the shape or the color of encoded pictures. Twelve typically developing children (9.9 years; 7 girls) performed an auditory retrieval task in which they had to retrieve the frequency or the duration of encoded sounds. Both tasks were designed with the same 3 phases: encoding, retrieval and test, the only difference being in the nature of the encoded material. In each task, a control condition was included in which participants were not instructed to retrieve for any aspect of the encoded stimulus. This condition controlled also for children’s depth of encoding, decision making and motor responses. EEG recordings were acquired using the 64 electrodes BioSemi Active Two system (BioSemi, Amsterdam). EEG-ERPs were analyzed with the ELAN software (Aguera et al, 2011). The EEG analysis was focused on a time window of interest corresponding to the retrieval phase. The continuous EEG was segmented according to this time window and only correct trials were considered for the analysis. In the visual retrieval task, children had 88%, 81% and 72% success rates in the control, color retrieval and shape retrieval conditions respectively. In the auditory retrieval task, children had 96%, 76% and 75% success rates in the control, frequency retrieval and duration retrieval conditions respectively. There was no difference in children’s accuracy between auditory and visual retrieval (p = 0.39) suggesting that the difficulty of the two types of retrieval was equal across children. In each group, a series of Wilcoxon signed rank tests revealed a significant frontal negativity in association with active retrieval. The maximal amplitude of this negativity (8,5µV) was recorded at left and central frontal sites (F1, Fz, FC1) at a mean latency of 350 ms. To compare this frontal negativity in both groups, the maximum amplitude and peak latency of the signal were measured manually for each subject within a 80 ms time window around the peak of the grand average waveforms specific to each group. There was no difference in the latency and the amplitude of the negativity between the two groups (t test). These data suggest that, as in adults, there are common processes for active retrieval in children at least when the stored information is visual or auditory. The frontal negativity (N400 like) may be a potential marker of the processes underlying access to memory in children.

Authors

• Geneviève Cadoret, University of Quebec in Montreal
  Presenting Author

• Anik Paquet, University of Quebec in Montreal
  Non-Presenting Author

• France Simard, University of Quebec in Montreal
  Non-Presenting Author