The functional brain networks that underlie visual working memory in the first two years of life

Abstract

Visual working memory (VWM) is a central cognitive system used to compare views of the world and detect changes in the local environment. This system undergoes dramatic development in the first two years; however, we know relatively little about the functional organization of VWM at the level of the brain. Here, we used image-based functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to test four hypotheses about the spatial organization of the VWM network in early development. Four-month-olds, 1-year-olds, and 2-year-olds completed a VWM task while we recorded neural activity from 19 cortical regions-of-interest identified from a meta-analysis of the adult fMRI literature on VWM. Results showed significant task-specific functional activation near 6 of 19 ROIs, revealing spatial consistency in the brain regions activated in our study and brain regions identified to be part of the VWM network in adult fMRI studies. Working memory related activation was centered on bilateral anterior intraparietal sulcus (aIPS), left temporoparietal junction (TPJ), and left ventral occipital complex (VOC), while visual exploratory measures were associated with activation in right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, left TPJ, and bilateral IPS. Results show that a distributed brain network underlies functional changes in VWM in infancy, revealing new insights into the neural mechanisms that support infants’ improved ability to remember visual information and to detect changes in an on-going visual stream.

The neural correlates of inhibitory control in 10-month-old infants: a functional near-infrared spectroscopy study

“…The final sample of participants with valid fNIRS data was 59. This level of data attrition is similar to what is seen in other infant fNIRS studies (e.g., Bulgarelli et al, 2019;Lloyd-Fox et al, 2019;Reyes et al, 2020), yet our sample of valid data is substantially larger than typical sample sizes for infant fNIRS studies (e.g., de Lloyd-Fox et al, 2015).…”

“…Accompanying these cognitive advances are important structural and functional maturation processes in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), a region of the brain consistently associated with EFs (Diamond, 2002;Fiske & Holmboe, 2019). Although there is some insight into the neural mechanisms involved in the development of working memory in infants and toddlers (Reyes et al, 2020;Wijeakumar et al, 2019), studies that identify the specific areas of the brain that are functionally associated with inhibitory control in infancy are rare. As such, knowledge about the neural substrates of EF across this period of infancy and early childhood is limited.…”

“…fNIRS is a non-invasive, optical imaging technique that uses near-infrared light to measure the haemodynamic response; increases of oxygenated haemoglobin and decreases in deoxygenated haemoglobin concentrations in the cortex of the brain. Evidencing the feasibility and growing popularity of this technique in developmental research, growing numbers of studies are using fNIRS to investigate the neural correlates of EF in preschool and school-age children (Buss et al, 2014;Kerr-German & Buss, 2020;Monden et al, 2015;Moriguchi et al, 2018;Reyes et al, 2020;Wijeakumar et al, 2019;Yanaoka et al, 2020). Studies using fNIRS to investigate response inhibition in this age group have found increased right lateral PFC activation when inhibition was successful (Moriguchi and Shinohara, 2019), and that children and adults showed activation in the same areas (right PFC and parietal cortex) where inhibition was required, although children had a more immature response pattern (Mehnert et al, 2013).…”

Investigating Developmental Changes in Scalp-Cortex Correspondence Using Diffuse Optical Tomography Sensitivity in Infancy

“…Reyes, Wijeakumar, Magnotta, Forbes, and Spencer (2020) show examples of this. They selected head models with atlas parcellations from the Neurodevelopmental MRI database (Richards, in prep;Richards, Sanchez, et al, 2015;Sanchez et al, 2012aSanchez et al, , 2012b) that were closely matched in age of the participants (4-month to 2-year-olds: Delgado Reyes et al, 2020; 4-to 48-month-olds: Wijeakumar et al, 2019).…”

A processing pipeline for image reconstructed fNIRS analysis using both MRI templates and individual anatomy

“…In recent years there has been a rise in the usage of functional Near Infra-Red Spectroscopy (fNIRS) in neuroimaging studies (1)(2)(3)(4)(5). fNIRS is a safe, non-invasive method of neuroimaging, which measures the concentration of oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin.…”