Development of the P300 from childhood to adulthood: a multimodal EEG and MRI study

Abstract

Maturation of attentional processes is central to cognitive development. The electrophysiological P300 is associated with rapid allocation of attention, and bridges stimulus and response processing. P300 is among the most studied and robust electrophysiological components, but how different subcomponents of the P300 develop from childhood to adulthood and relate to structural properties of the cerebral cortex is not well understood. We investigated age-related differences in both early visual and P300 components, and how individual differences in these components are related to cortical structure in a cross-sectional sample of participants 8-19 years (n = 86). Participants completed a three-stimulus visual oddball task while high-density EEG was recorded. Cortical surface area and thickness were estimated from T1-weighted MRI. Group-level blind source separation of the EEG data identified two P300-like components, a fronto-central P300 and a parietal P300, as well as a component reflecting N1 and P2. Differences in activity across age were found for the parietal P300, N1 and P2, with the parietal P300 showing stronger activity for older participants, while N1 and P2 were stronger for younger participants. Stronger P300 components were positively associated with task performance, independently of age, while negative associations were found for P2 strength. Parietal P300 strength was age-independently associated with larger surface area in a region in left lateral inferior temporal cortex. We suggest that the age differences in component strength reflect development of attentional mechanisms, with increased brain responses to task-relevant stimuli representing an increasing ability to focus on relevant information and to respond accurately and efficiently.

Error processing in the adolescent brain: Age-related differences in electrophysiology, behavioral adaptation, and brain morphology

“…If we use the interpretation that the Pe indexes error awareness and strategic adjustment (Nieuwenhuis et al, 2001;Ridderinkhof et al, 2009), while the ERN reflects automatic, motivational error processing, the differing trajectories would imply that while the ability to detect and process errors consciously reaches full maturity early, the ability to engage motivationally to respond quickly and automatically to errors has a more protracted development. Interestingly, these age-associations differ from what has been observed for the related N200 and P300 ERPs, where the N200 has generally been shown to decrease in strength with age (Downes et al, 2017), and P300 to increase (van Dinteren et al, 2014), which is also what we have observed previously in the same sample as the present study (Overbye et al, 2018).…”

“…In youth, we recently found a positive relationship between P300 strength and cortical surface area in a region in the left inferior temporal gyrus (Overbye et al, 2018), but no previous studies have tested the associations between ERN or Pe and brain structure. We did, however, not find any significant associations between either ERN or Pe and regional cingulate cortex thickness or surface area in the present study.…”

“…The evidence regarding the source of Pe is less clear than for the ERN, but again the cingulate cortex seems to be the most likely candidate, albeit possibly with a more rostral source than the ERN (Herrmann et al, 2004;Veen & Carter, 2002). The surface area of the cingulate cortex, and most other cortical regions, shows the greatest age-related increase before approximately age 10 (Amlien et al, 2014), but relatively little change through adolescence (A. M. Fjell et al, 2018). Based on this, differences in cingulate cortex surface area in adolescence may not primarily reflect maturational differences, but rather more stable individual differences.…”

Electrophysiological and behavioral indices of cognitive conflict processing across adolescence

“…An extensive review and meta-analysis of developmental studies on the P300 in auditory oddball tasks by van Dinteren, Arns, Jongsma, and Kessels (2014b) concluded that the P300 amplitude increases from childhood to adulthood. This is also what we recently found for a visual oddball task (Overbye, Huster, Walhovd, Fjell, & Tamnes, 2018).…”

Comparison of EEG source reconstructed functional networks in healthy subjects elicited during visual oddball task

“…Moreover, WT/MEAN pair yields greater R value than Hilbert/MEAN over parietal region (LP) as well and the difference is significant. According to other researches, activity over parietal region is essentially elicited by P300 response which is a significant oddball event [97,98]. Thus, we believe that WT/PCA and WT/MEAN pairs provide good performance for PLV to localize the connectivity triggered by P300 response.…”