Evidence of hippocampal learning in human infants

Ellis, Cameron T.; Skalaban, Lena J.; Yates, Tristan S; Bejjanki, Vikranth R.; oacuterdova, Natalia I C; Turk‐Browne, Nicholas B.

doi:10.1101/2020.10.07.329862

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…In sum, we found that frontal regions from adult frontoparietal and cingulo-opercular networks are recruited to support stimulus-driven attention in infants. This study adds to the growing evidence that the frontal cortex supports infant cognition, despite undergoing substantial and protracted anatomical development (Ellis et al, 2020a;Raz and Saxe, 2020). Functionality of frontal cortex is honed over the course of development to support complex operations (Munakata et al, 2012), but these regions may be sufficiently developed in infancy to support stimulus-driven attention.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Attention recruits frontal cortex in human infants

Ellis

Skalaban

Yates

et al. 2021

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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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.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Attention recruits frontal cortex in human infants

Ellis

Skalaban

Yates

et al. 2021

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Moreover, a mother’s hug that has somatosensory, cardiorespiratory and thermoregulation consequences is accompanied also by her smell, her song and her face [ 35 • ]. Multisensory input about the maternal body is thus bound together in common inferences about the causes of changes to one’s physiological states (embodied mentalisation; [ 12 ]), with this binding possibly being processed by the hippocampus even before episodic memories can be laid down [ 36 ]. In everyday life, feeding, sleeping, bathing routines typically include endless repetitions of multisensory and affect-modulating bundles from at least two bodies.…”

Section: Caregiving Touch As Homeostatic Affect Regulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Affective regulation through touch: homeostatic and allostatic mechanisms

Fotopoulou

Mohr

Krahé

2022

Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences

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“…In adults fundamental research in human and non-human primates has described the nature of the neural representations underlying mature visual categorization abilities, revealing their temporal dynamics 2,9 , what features they encode [10][11][12] , their cortical locus 11,18 , and how they relate to neural oscillations 13,14 . In contrast, these key characteristics of visual category representations [19][20][21][22][23] are less well understood in infants due to strong methodological challenges in human and nonhuman infant neuroimaging research 8,24,25 . In particular, research using EEG -the workhorse of infant neuroimaging for decades -has yielded insights that are principally limited in two ways.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual category representations in the infant brain

Xie

Hoehl

Moeskops

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Visual categorization is a human core cognitive capacity that depends on the development of visual category representations in the infant brain. The nature of infant visual category representations and their relationship to the corresponding adult form however remain unknown. Our results clarify the nature of visual category representations in 6-to 8-month-old infants and their developmental trajectory towards adult maturity in the key characteristics temporal dynamics, representational format, and spectral properties. Temporal dynamics change from slowly emerging, developing representations in infants to quickly emerging, complex representations in adults. Despite those differences infants and adults already partly share visual category representations. The format of infants’ representations are visual features of low to intermediate complexity, whereas adults’ representations also encoded high complexity features. Theta band neural oscillations form the basis of visual category representations in infants, and these representations are shifted to the alpha/beta band in adults.

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Evidence of hippocampal learning in human infants

Cited by 8 publications

References 44 publications

Attention recruits frontal cortex in human infants

Attention recruits frontal cortex in human infants

Affective regulation through touch: homeostatic and allostatic mechanisms

Visual category representations in the infant brain

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