Poster #8 - Resting State Functional Connectivity Predicts EF and Attentional Selectivity in Toddlers and Preschoolers

• In Event: 1-169 - Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Section - Attention, Learning, Memory

Integrative Statement

Attention can be described as the ability to maintain an alert state, orient to internal and external events, and self-regulate responses to those events. In infancy, attentional develops from being primarily exogenously drawn to being endogenously controlled. Executive attention develops in early childhood and is higher level of attentional functioning that involves not only attending to objects, but attending to specific features of objects. Although executive attention is thought to build upon basic attentional processing such as orienting, alerting, and shifting, the relationship between these attention functions is unclear. The current project aims to characterize the relationship between different aspects of attention during the toddler years. Previous developmental work has focused on characterizing different attentional networks and their associated functions (alerting, orienting, and selecting) during early to late childhood, demonstrating the robust behavioral and neural changes that occur in frontal (e.g. prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate gyrus) and parietal areas (e.g. superior parietal lobe, temporoparietal junction, and intraparietal sulcus)(Columbo, 2001; Posner & Peterson, 2012). However, research has not examine how these networks emerge (e.g. intra- and interregional functional connectivity) and in what way they interact with executive attention measures in early childhood. We used fNIRS to examine connectivity of these three attentional networks at rest and compared how these measures of connectivity were related to various attention functions in toddlers and preschool aged children. The results presented here are preliminary as data collection and analysis are still on-going.
Twenty-four 2.5- (M=2.53) and 3.5-year-olds (M=3.48) were given a resting state eyes-closed baseline, delayed gratification (DG)task, and a flanker task. Older children were also given the triad classification task (e.g. a selective attention measure), as well as the DCCS (e.g. canonical probe of EF developmental status). Hemodynamics data was collected using CW7 fNIRS system. Hemodynamic data were collected for all tasks, but here we only focus on hemodynamics during the resting state tasks. Correlation coefficients for the channel-pairs were identified after motion and physiological artifact were removed and only channels that passed a minimum p-value criteria of .01 correlation-coefficient criteria of .45 were considered. Resting state neural data were analyzed from probes placed over bilateral frontal and parietal regions. We identified regions of interest (see Figure 1) and analyzed channel pairs in which resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) was greatest.
The strength of rsFC within frontal and parietal regions is greater in 3.5 in comparison to 2.5 year olds. The strength of rsFC within right superior intraparietal sulcus (IPS) was predictive of accuracy on all trials types in the flanker task for 3.5-year-olds but not 2.5-year-olds (r2=.962, p=.002). Rather, flanker difference scores were predicted by interregional connectivity between right superior and inferior frontal cortex (r2=.744, p=.014). Conflict scores were predictive of performance on the TC, suggesting that selective attention to spatial and featural information may share a similar attentional mechanism (r2=.975, p=.005). Emergent relationships between IPS and DG, attention and EF behavioral measures and both frontal and posterior rsFC were also trending, however data collection is still ongoing and not fully represented here.

Authors

• Anastasia N Kerr-German, University of TN-Knoxville
  Presenting Author

• Maigread Lennon, University of TN-Knoxville
  Non-Presenting Author

• Aaron T. Buss, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  Non-Presenting Author