Electrophysiological Markers of Early Infant Development: an ERP study in the UK and rural Gambia.

• In Event: 2-043 - Objective measures of early development in low- and middle-income countries: EEG, Eye-tracking, fNIRS

Integrative Statement

A large proportion of young children in low- and middle- income countries show compromised neurodevelopmental outcomes at school age (McCoy et al., 2016). To date there is a lack of early neurocognitive markers of atypical development in these populations, impeding the implementation of early identification and intervention.
The current study assesses neural correlates of deviance detection in infant cohorts in the UK and The Gambia, West Africa at 1 and 5 month of age. This work forms part of the Brain Imaging for Global Health (BRIGHT) project which investigates markers of cognitive development in Gambian and UK infants from birth to 2 years. The ability to detect novel stimuli in the environment is a fundamental process of early cognitive development, the neural correlates of which have been extensively studied across infancy and childhood using event- related potentials (ERP).
We used an auditory oddball ERP paradigm in which infants are presented with frequent tones, and two types of deviant stimuli, infrequent white noise segments and a range of trial-unique novel sounds. Prior research has shown a developmental change in the amplitude of P3 ERP responses to these deviant stimuli in the first six months of life, with an increase in P3 amplitude to trial unique stimuli and a decrease in amplitude to the white noise segments (Kushnerenko et al., 2013), indicating an increased novelty preference. These studies further demonstrated decreases in the P3 components’ latency. We predicted that we would replicate these two findings.
Figure 1 shows group average ERP’s for both age points and study cohorts. We examined the effects of Age, Condition and Study cohort on P3 amplitude. A main effect was found for Condition (F2,106=15.728, p <.001). Interactions were found for Condition * Age (F1,53=2.232, p=.022) and Condition x Age x Site (F2,106=3.776, p=.003). Figure 2 illustrates the Condition * Age * Site effect, showing that response to the infrequent tones decreases in both cohorts, whereas the corresponding increase to the trial unique tones is primarily driven by the UK cohort. With regard to latency changes, as predicted we found an effect for Age (F2,106=6.52, p=.014). We also found an effect for Site (F1,53=4.13, p=.047) and a Site * Age interaction (F2,53=5.48, p=.007). In summary, these findings indicate a reduced developmental change in auditory novelty processing in the Gambian cohort between 1 and 5 months.
This study is the first to implement ERP markers to study infant development in a resource poor setting. The presented findings indicate that the Gambian infant cohort tested shows differential ERP responses from as early at 1 month of age and a differential developmental trajectory towards the 5 month time point. These findings form the basis in the definition of early markers of atypical neurocognitive development within the Gambian cohort. By relating these markers to future cognitive and behavioural outcomes, we will be able to assess their utility in making predictions for individuals, to guide early intervention and counteract negative outcomes later in life.

Group Authors

BRIGHT Team

Authors

• Laura Kischkel, University College Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health
  Presenting Author

• Maria Rozhko, University College London
  Non-Presenting Author

• Samantha McCann, Medical Research Council Unit The Gambia at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Saikou Drammeh, Medical Research Council Unit The Gambia at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ebrima M'bye, Medical Research Council Unit The Gambia at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Luke Mason, Birkbeck, University of London
  Non-Presenting Author

• Clare E Elwell, University College London
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sarah Lloyd-Fox, Birkbeck, University of London
  Non-Presenting Author

• Michelle de Haan, University College Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health
  Non-Presenting Author