Development of preparatory activity indexed by the contingent negative variation in children

Abstract

Objectives: The present study investigated the influence of the cerebral maturity in the process of cue task-specific preparatory activation induced by an spatial cue using a central cue Posner paradigm. For these purposes, the behavioral responses and the Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) generated between the S1 (the warning stimulus) and the S2 (the imperative stimulus) were compared in 16 healthy children (8-13 years old) and 17 healthy young adults (18-23 years old). Methods:The EEG was recorded from 20 scalp sites of the International 10-20 system. The complete trial period included a central directional cue that was on for 300 ms and an attentive waiting period lasting 1360 ms. Finally, a peripheral target subtending a visual angle of 4.56º and situated 2.28º eccentrically in the horizontal meridian appeared. The early and late components of the CNV appearing in the period between the cue and the target were analyzed. Results:The CNV of children did not show contralateral cortical activation related to motor preparation. However, the young adults showed contralateral to the cue activation in motor areas.The children and young adults showed cortical activation in the posterior sensory areas, displaying a contralateral to the cue pattern of activation. In addition to this, a parietal positive component appeared in children during the CNV period. Conclusions:These results might reflect a higher immaturity of the motor preparation system compared with the sensory preparatory system in children. It is possible that children used different strategies than young adults to prepare for stimuli and responses.

Preparatory attention after lesions to the lateral or orbital prefrontal cortex – An event-related potentials study

“…This suggests that although the slow positive and negative components might both reflect orienting processes, they have at least partly separate generators and might reflect partly different subprocesses within the broad concept of orienting. Contrary to a hypothesis of partly different sources for the early CNV and posterior positivity, Flores et al (2009) showed that an early anterior negativity and a posterior positivity observed in the CNV period have one common posterior source in children (Flores et al, 2009). In line with this, van Leeuwen et al (1998) found posterior sources only for the CNV/P3 complex.…”

Response-Stimulus Interval Duration Modulates Interference Effects in the Stroop Task1

“…Children are globally slower to respond than adults, most probably due to slower speed processing and higher difficulties to allocate sustained attention to the task. Moreover, response preparation is known to be slower in children, as compared to adults (Bender, Weisbrod, Bornfleth, Resch, & Oelkers-Ax, 2005;Flores, Digiacomo, Meneres, Trigo, & Gomez, 2009;Urben, Van der Linden, & Barisnikov, 2011). Our results show that even if children are generally slower than adults, similar interference effects are observed between the 2 groups.…”

Updating of Attentional and Premotor Allocation Resources as function of previous trial outcome

“…From a neurophysiological point of view, previous studies have observed frontal activation related to maintenance of attention during the cue-target delay period, and sensory-motor pre-activation, contralateral to the cue, indicating a build-up of attentional and motor resources necessary to adequately perform the task162227. Therefore, the possible modulation of the preparatory signals would be related to the validity/invalidity effect1027363839.…”

“…proposed an integrative theory of attention in which three different attentional subsystems are present: alert, orientation and executive424344. The use of symbolic cues to predict the appearance of a stimulus in a certain spatial position is related to the pre-activation of the neural resources needed to perceive and respond to the predicted stimulus1016222736. These predictive neurophysiological signals would be associated with the physiological implementation of the a priori probabilities that a target would appear in a certain spatial position.…”

“…In the present study, two periods are analyzed, an initial period called the ‘early CNV', which would be related to the sensory orientation process generated by the cue, and a later period called the ‘late CNV', which would reflect motor preparation for response to the incoming target3451. Recently, the later period (late CNV) has also been associated with the preparation of the sensory neural areas needed for processing the expected target51622.…”