Brains in Sync: Practical Guideline for Parent–Infant EEG During Natural Interaction

Verbal interaction and imitation are essential for language learning and development in young children. However, it is unclear how mother–child dyads synchronize oscillatory neural activity at the cortical level in turn-based speech interactions. Our study investigated interbrain synchrony in mother–child pairs during a turn-taking paradigm of verbal imitation. A dual-MEG (magnetoencephalography) setup was used to measure brain activity from interactive mother–child pairs simultaneously. Interpersonal neural synchronization was compared between socially interactive and noninteractive tasks (passive listening to pure tones). Interbrain networks showed increased synchronization during the socially interactive compared to noninteractive conditions in the theta and alpha bands. Enhanced interpersonal brain synchrony was observed in the right angular gyrus, right triangular, and left opercular parts of the inferior frontal gyrus. Moreover, these parietal and frontal regions appear to be the cortical hubs exhibiting a high number of interbrain connections. These cortical areas could serve as a neural marker for the interactive component in verbal social communication. The present study is the first to investigate mother–child interbrain neural synchronization during verbal social interactions using a dual-MEG setup. Our results advance our understanding of turn-taking during verbal interaction between mother–child dyads and suggest a role for social “gating” in language learning.

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“…Coherence was used here to measure similarity of cognitive states between 2 individuals ( Ayrolles et al. 2021 ; Turk et al. 2022 ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dual-MEG interbrain synchronization during turn-taking verbal interactions between mothers and children

et al. 2022

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“…Notably, real-life measurement in the home context (with infant-adapted wearables) is possible [165]. These realistic recordings may be more reliable (especially to study parent-infant interaction when regulation problems are emerging) than in an artificial lab situation [180,181,218]. Research is ongoing and progress is being made in complex behavioral data analysis [219].…”

Section: Implications For Mental Healthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Current perspectives on perinatal mental health and neurobehavioral development: focus on regulation, coregulation and self-regulation

Van den Bergh,

Antonelli,

Stein

2024

Current Opinion in Psychiatry

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Purpose of review Perinatal mental health research provides an important perspective on neurobehavioral development. Here, we aim to review the association of maternal perinatal health with offspring neurodevelopment, providing an update on (self-)regulation problems, hypothesized mechanistic pathways, progress and challenges, and implications for mental health. Recent findings (1) Meta-analyses confirm that maternal perinatal mental distress is associated with (self-)regulation problems which constitute cognitive, behavioral, and affective social-emotional problems, while exposure to positive parental mental health has a positive impact. However, effect sizes are small. (2) Hypothesized mechanistic pathways underlying this association are complex. Interactive and compensatory mechanisms across developmental time are neglected topics. (3) Progress has been made in multiexposure studies. However, challenges remain and these are shared by clinical, translational and public health sciences. (4) From a mental healthcare perspective, a multidisciplinary and system level approach employing developmentally-sensitive measures and timely treatment of (self-)regulation and coregulation problems in a dyadic caregiver-child and family level approach seems needed. The existing evidence-base is sparse. Summary During the perinatal period, addressing vulnerable contexts and building resilient systems may promote neurobehavioral development. A pluralistic approach to research, taking a multidisciplinary approach to theoretical models and empirical research needs to be fostered.

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“…Neural data from infants and children tend to be noisy. However, several guidelines now offer support on processing and analyzing parent-child fNIRS and EEG (Kayhan et al, 2022;Marriott Haresign et al, 2022;Turk et al, 2022) hyperscanning data. Furthermore, there has been a noteworthy flourishing of general preprocessing recommendations for infant EEG (Gabard-Durnam et al, 2018;Lopez et al, 2022), as well as tutorials and toolboxes that can instruct naïve users on how to extract measures of coordination, neural tracking, synchrony, and information flow (Ayrolles et al, 2021;Jessen et al, 2021).…”

Section: Multi-person Brain Measurementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early social communication through music: State of the art and future perspectives

Nguyen¹,

Flaten²,

Trainor³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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A growing body of research shows that the universal capacity for music perception and production emerges early in development. Possibly building on this predisposition, caregivers around the world often communicate with infants using songs or speech entailing song-like characteristics. This suggests that music might be one of the earliest developing and most accessible forms of interpersonal communication, providing a platform for studying early communicative behavior. However, little research has examined music in truly communicative contexts. The current work aims to facilitate the development of experimental approaches that rely on dynamic and naturalistic social interactions. We first review two longstanding lines of research that examine musical interactions by focusing either on the caregiver or the infant. These include defining the acoustic and non-acoustic features that characterize infant-directed (ID) music, as well as behavioral and neurophysiological research examining infants’ processing of musical timing and pitch. Next, we review recent studies looking at early musical interactions holistically. This research focuses on how caregivers and infants interact using music to achieve co-regulation, mutual engagement, and increase affiliation and prosocial behavior. We conclude by discussing methodological, technological, and analytical developments that might empower a comprehensive study of musical communication in early childhood.

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Brains in Sync: Practical Guideline for Parent–Infant EEG During Natural Interaction

Cited by 11 publications

References 121 publications

Dual-MEG interbrain synchronization during turn-taking verbal interactions between mothers and children

Dual-MEG interbrain synchronization during turn-taking verbal interactions between mothers and children

Current perspectives on perinatal mental health and neurobehavioral development: focus on regulation, coregulation and self-regulation

Early social communication through music: State of the art and future perspectives

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