Attention recruits frontal cortex in human infants

Abstract

Young infants learn about the world by overtly shifting their attention to perceptually salient events. In adults, attention recruits several brain regions spanning the frontal and parietal lobes. However, it is unclear whether these regions are sufficiently mature in infancy to support attention and, more generally, how infant attention is supported by the brain. We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 24 sessions from 20 awake behaving infants 3 mo to 12 mo old while they performed a child-friendly attentional cuing task. A target was presented to either the left or right of the infant’s fixation, and offline gaze coding was used to measure the latency with which they saccaded to the target. To manipulate attention, a brief cue was presented before the target in three conditions: on the same side as the upcoming target (valid), on the other side (invalid), or on both sides (neutral). All infants were faster to look at the target on valid versus invalid trials, with valid faster than neutral and invalid slower than neutral, indicating that the cues effectively captured attention. We then compared the fMRI activity evoked by these trial types. Regions of adult attention networks activated more strongly for invalid than valid trials, particularly frontal regions. Neither behavioral nor neural effects varied by infant age within the first year, suggesting that these regions may function early in development to support the orienting of attention. Together, this furthers our mechanistic understanding of how the infant brain controls the allocation of attention.

Neural event segmentation of continuous experience in human infants

“…Alternatively, ROIs could be defined in each individual using a functional localizer task, though collecting both movie and localizer data from a single awake infant session is difficult. Regardless, in other studies we have successfully used adult-defined ROIs [35,36] . Finally, the age range of infants was wide from a developmental perspective.…”

One-year old infants control bottom-up saliencies to purposely sustain attention

“…Growing theory and evidence suggests that infants' experiences in sustaining attention plays a causal role in the development of executive control processes [3,18,19]. The present findings suggest that these executive functions may begin by controlling externally directed behaviors that resolve competition by controlling the input [20].…”

“…The present findings suggest that these executive functions may begin by controlling externally directed behaviors that resolve competition by controlling the input [20]. A mechanistic path from external to internal control of competition may reside in the known overlap of brain networks that plan eye-head movements and those that control visual attention [21] and in the feed-forward and feedback connections between pre-frontal cortex and early stage visual processing evident in infancy [3,18]. Identifying the early experiences that support the development of executive functions is a major goal of developmental science given the strong evidence that individual differences form early, are experience dependent, and have life-long consequences [3,22].…”

Face processing in the infant brain after pandemic lockdown

“…We followed validated procedures and parameters (see Figure 1A) for collecting fMRI data from awake infants (Ellis et al, 2020, 2021a,b,c; Yates et al, 2022). Data were acquired using the bottom half of a 20-channel head coil on a Siemens Prisma (3T) MRI.…”