Variation in Timing of Perceptual Narrowing for Faces in U.S. Infants Exposed to General Anesthesia

• In Event: Recent findings on the development of face processing and preferences in early childhood

Abstract

Millions of infants in the United States alone receive anesthesia for necessary medical interventions each year. However, this anesthetic exposure may lead to changes in sensory processing and cognition that are not well understood (Colon et al., 2017). In animal models, exposure to general anesthetic drugs has been shown to accelerate brain development supporting critical periods of learning (Takesian & Hensch, 2013). Early exposure to general anesthesia in humans may then alter developmental timing for domains undergoing critical periods of heightened brain plasticity during the first year of life (Werker & Hensch, 2015). One such domain is face processing. Behavioral research has found that six-month-old infants are able to discriminate between two different human and monkey faces, but by 9-months-of-age are only able to discriminate between human faces (Pascalis et al., 2002). The current study will investigate if anesthesia exposure during the first months of life alters this developmental trajectory of perceptual narrowing for face processing.

Infants exposed (N = 20) and non-exposed (N = 23) to general anesthesia (GA) during the first few months of life visited the lab at 4- and 10-months-of-age. Infants participated in a passive-viewing paradigm of cropped white female faces and macaque monkey faces while electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded from a high-density 128-channel net. The study utilized an oddball design, where 70% of the human and monkey faces were the same model, and 30% of the human and monkey faces were novel models. Data were processed using HAPPE+ER software (Monachino et al., 2022). Face-sensitive and attention marker event-related potentials (ERPs) were extracted, including the N290 and Nc components, respectively.

Repeated measures ANOVAs were conducted for each ERP component of interest with Condition (Human Standard, Human Oddball, Monkey Standard, and Monkey Oddball) and Timepoint (4 months and 10 months) as within-subject factors and Group (GA or Control) as a between-subject factor. For the N290, there was a main effect of group for latency to peak N290 (F(1,41) = 7.16, p = .011). Infants in the GA group displayed faster latencies to peak N290 than infants in the control group, across all ages and conditions. There was also a main effect of condition (F(3,123) = 6.60, p < .001) and age (F(1,41) = 14.37, p < .001) on the peak amplitude of the N290. For the Nc, there was a main effect of both age (F(1,42) = 31.78, p < .001) and condition (F(3,126) = 8.01, p < .001). The mean amplitude of the Nc was more negative in general to all faces for 10-month-olds than 4-month-olds, and to monkey faces than to human faces. There was no main effect of group observed in the Nc.

Results suggest that GA exposure might accelerate the neural correlates of face processing, indexed by faster latencies to peak N290 at both time points. No effects of GA exposure were observed for the Nc, the ERP component that marks attention, suggesting group differences in face processing were not due to differences in attention. Additional results will be discussed.

Authors

• Sarah A McCormick, Northeastern University
  Presenting Author

• Ellie Underwood

• Alice Tao

• Isabelle Kim

• Siobhan Coffman

• Charles A. Nelson, Harvard Medical School

• Charles Berde

• Takao K. Hensch

• Laura Cornelissen

• Laurel J. Gabard-Durnam, Northeastern University