Measuring the Infant Brain at Play: A Pilot fNIRS Study

• In Event: Unifying Neurobiological, Computational, Environmental, and Clinical Studies to Advance Developmental Research: A Multimethodological Approach

Abstract

Infants’ first-person experiences during the early years are crucial to early cognitive and neural development. Decades of infant fNIRS research has illuminated the cortical correlates of numerous cognitive processes (e.g., speech and object perception), however, there is a gulf between an infant’s experiences and how these experiences are commonly studied. Most studies are highly constrained, with structured and passive tasks, where infants watch stimuli presented in a predetermined and strictly timed order. While these studies greatly improve our understanding of infant neurocognitive development, it remains unclear whether observed findings translate to real-life, naturalistic situations. In our study, we aimed to bring infant first-person experiences to the forefront of scientific inquiry by measuring the neural correlates of cognitive processes in a less structured, more naturalistic setting.
Nineteen 5- to 7-month-olds (13 female, Mage = 5.9 months) engaged in face-to-face play with their caregiver, while we recorded infants’ brain activity using a 44-channel NIRSport2 functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) system. fNIRS is a non-invasive method that uses light to detect changes in concentration of hemoglobin in the cortex. To facilitate and slightly constrain the interactions, caregivers brought their infants favorite toys and selected a small number of novel toys from the lab to play with. The only instructions were to keep the infant relatively still and play with one toy at a time. The recording continued for as long as the infant wanted to play and wear the cap (1-25 min, M = 13.4 min). All infants wore the fNIRS headgear, 16 infants played for over 5 minutes (our minimum criteria). We manually coded the synchronized video-recordings marking observed behaviors of interest (e.g., infant-directed speech, infant vocalizing, infant touching a toy, etc). Analyses of the behavioral data showed that we were able to observe all the behaviors of interest in every baby that played for over 5 minutes. The frequency and temporal distribution of these behaviors was well suited to fNIRS analyses: For very frequent behaviors (e.g., infant reaching, caregiver’s infant directed speech) each instance lasted around 1-5s, while for other behaviors (e.g., caregiver singing, infant touching toy) - around 20-25s. We assessed the fNIRS data and found that for 13 infants we could detect the heartbeat from the fNIRS signal, an indication of high data quality. Ongoing work in our lab aims to quantify the strength and location of neural responses to first person experiences (e.g., speech). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first infant fNIRS study to measure the neural correlates of infant first-person experiences during free play. Together, the facts that 1) we successfully recorded fNIRS data in infants during a period of free play, 2) infants displayed the behaviors of interest, and 3) the collected data had high quality indicate that measuring the infant brain at play is feasible. The devised methods to collect and analyze infant brain responses in unstructured scenarios will open the door for future research.

Group Authors

Aleksandra A. W. Dopierala
[email protected]
University of British Columbia

Annie Schwartzstein
[email protected]
University of California
Princeton University

Yi (Koei) Yang
[email protected]
University of British Columbia

Lauren L. Emberson
[email protected]
University of British Columbia; Princeton University

Authors

• Aleksandra (Ola) Dopierala, University of British Columbia (UBC)
  Presenting Author

• Annie Schwartzstein, University of California

• Yi Koei Yang, University of British Columbia

• Lauren L. Emberson, Princeton University