Genetic variation in the oxytocin system and its link to social motivation in human infants

Frontal asymmetry assessed in infancy using functional near‐infrared spectroscopy is associated with emotional and behavioral problems in early childhood

“…across conditions for the full sample but found groupby-condition effects (e.g., significant differences in FA across conditions for one group [autism spectrum disorder vs. neurotypical; risk allele vs. no risk allele for oxytocin receptor gene] but not the other; Krol et al, 2021;Lauttia et al, 2019). Moreover, a similar pattern was reported in a sample of 5-year-old children, where there were no differences in FA assessed using EEG at the group level between happy and sad films (but both were associated with increased activity [decreased power] compared with a non-social task period); yet, there were differences at the individual level, where only FA response to a happy (but not sad) film was associated with depressive symptoms (Feng et al, 2012).…”

“…Then, a flexible targeted Principal Component Analysis with up to three iterations (hmrMotionCorrectPCArecurse; tMotion = 1.0, tMask = 1.0, Std Thresh = 100, Amp Thresh = 0.1, nSV = 0.97) was used to correct for motion artifacts. Following motion correction, time points that remained contaminated by noise were excluded from the time courses (hmrMotionArtifactByChannel; tMotion = 1.0, tMask = 1.0, Std Thresh = 100, Amp Thresh = 0.1), and then a band-pass filter (third-order Butterworth) was applied using a 0.3 Hz low-pass filter and a high-pass filter of 0.02 Hz (for fNIRS studies with similar ages and filter parameters, see Kelsey et al, 2019;Krol et al, 2021). OD data were then converted to concentration changes using the modified Beer-Lambert law using a path length factor commonly used during infancy of 5 (Bayet et al, 2021;Cope & Delpy, 1988;Duncan et al, 1996;Pirazzoli et al, 2019).…”

“…Moreover, fNIRS is a non-invasive, non-restrictive, and safe optical neuroimaging technique well-suited for use with pediatric populations. Preliminary work with fNIRS has shown that FA patterns differ across ratings of infant behavioral temperament (high vs. low ratings of negative emotionality; Ravicz et al, 2015) and genetic risk (risk allele vs. no risk allele; Krol et al, 2021) but is not associated with maternal depression or anxiety (Porto et al, 2020). Given the differences in the modalities and limited work, which has assessed FA with fNIRS it is unknown how much overlap there is between FA assessed using EEG and fNIRS.…”

Infants’ neural responses to helping and hindering scenarios

“…Future research should also incorporate other infant-friendly techniques to explore how social preferences are linked to activation in specific brain areas. For example, using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and eye-tracking, recent studies have shown that neural activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is associated with infants’ (visual) preferences for those who previously smiled versus frowned at them, and that genetic variation in the oxytocin system is linked to individual differences in these effects ( Krol and Grossmann, 2020 , Krol et al, 2021 ).…”

Modern Biomarkers for Autism Spectrum Disorder: Future Directions

“…Single nucleotide polymorphisms on the OXTR gene have been correlated with aggression, social function, and irritability [32][33][34]. While SNPs on the CD38 gene, which have been translated from an animal model of ASD, have been linked to low CD38 expression [35] and a lack of emotions [36]. Last, pharmacogenomics has promise for guiding drug therapies in ASD [37] but outcome studies provide only modest enthusiasm for predicting severe drug-drug interactions in ASD [38].…”