Final Report Summary - TRACKDEV (Tracking Early Development: From Basic Science to Applications)
The principal scientific aim of this project was to bring together university and private sector partners to better understand the relationship between the developing brain and emerging cognitive abilities. A second aim of this project was to work with private sector entrepreneurs to identify areas that might lead to beneficial and exploitable outcomes. Indeed, while much has been discovered about the developing brain over the last 20 years, little of this has been translated into commercially exploitable knowledge.
Understanding early development has a huge societal, economic and health impact. Over 5 million babies are born within the EU every year. How early development unfolds is a question that fascinates many new parents, but is also important for society as a whole. Individuals who do not develop in the typical fashion often fall behind in school, struggle to find employment and fail to fulfill their full economic and social potential. If we can spot those in difficulty early, we can intervene early and hopefully improve their prospects to the benefit of all involved.
The 7 Early Stage Researchers supported by this project used a combination of technologies to make a number of discoveries about how infants begin got make sense of the world around them.
For example, being able to predict what someone will do next is an important skill for cooperating with and understanding others. Some researchers have suggested that infants can only accurately predict another person’s on‐going action if they have experience with performing this action themselves. However, using the EEG techniques to measure electrical brain activity (FIGURE 1), we found that infants showed more motor cortex activation while watching upright stepping actions (actions we know they can predict) as compared to with when they watched inverted stepping actions (which we know they cannot predict). This suggests that infants were activating the motor areas of the brains when they were predicting how the stepping actions should continue, even though they did not yet have any experience performing this action themselves. We also used EEG methods to establish when infants realize that something has magically changed in the world, for example if an object re-appears from behind an occluder and has changed colours… is this normal? Is this unexpected and if so, for what class of objects is it normal or unexpected? Infants cannot tell us what they are thinking, but their brain activations can!
The ability to differentiate your own body from that of others is a fundamental skill, critical for humans’ ability to interact with their environments and the people in them. We know from adult studies that the integration of information from different senses is key to body awareness. But is this awareness present in newborns? To answer this question we measured brain oxygenation (through the use of NIRS techniques; FIGURE 2) and looking behaviours of 1‐ to 3‐day‐old newborns presented with a video of another baby’s face being touched on the cheek with a soft paintbrush, while the newborn’s corresponding cheek was either stroked at the same time or with a time delay. We found that the newborns expected the touch sensation in the location they had seen it to occur, and that they shared common brain mechanisms of body awareness with adults.
Although quite a lot is known about the advantageous effects of sleep in adults and older children, the role of sleep in infancy is still very poorly understood, even though young infants spend so much of their time asleep. We have been investigating which sleep patterns relate to the social and cognitive development of 4- to 10-month-olds. We are still analysing this large data set, but have so far found that sleep patterns change most between 4 and 6 months, and that more sleep is related to better memory abilities (FIGURE 3).
Eyes provide another window onto cognitive development. By studying gaze control, researchers can learn a great deal about developmental changes in decision-making. To this end, we followed two groups of babies from 3 to 6 months and from 6 to 12 months old in order to investigate how the control of eye movements develops over the first year of life. We found that at 3 months infants’ gaze is mainly driven by bottom-up factors such as colour or contrast, whereas from 4 months of age they start to use more complex viewing strategies, and adapt their eye‐movements to different viewing conditions. To help understand this transition, we developed a computer model of eye movement control in infants. Finally, in a large-scale behavioural genetic study, we explored the genetic markers of better visual attention and gaze control in infants, and asks how this relates to children’s subsequent inhibitory and self control skills as pre-schoolers.
Finally, brain and skill development co-occur outside infancy as well. Similar changes are observed in adults that transition from novice to expert in a skill intensive domain. Thus we studied expert musicians (violinists and pianists), contrasting their perceptual and cognitive performance with that of non-musicians. We collected structural MRI (brain imaging) data from both groups to relate individual and group differences in cortical myelination measured in vivo, to measures of perceptual and cognitive performance. This will allow us to ascertain how brain myelination (a process in swing flow during infancy) impacts on complex skill learning.
This project has successfully trained seven early stage researchers to PhD level, increasing their skill levels and employability. Five of the fellows were women, thereby helping to redress the imbalance that exists between genders in the life sciences.
Finally, the project has created a bridge between basic Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience research and commercial exploitation in the services, technology and product industries. While further collaborative work is required, this bridge barely existed before.
Further information can be found at:
http://www.cbcd.bbk.ac.uk/research/marie-curie-trackdev-1
Or by contacting the project coordinator, Professor Denis Mareschal,
email: d.mareschal@bbk.ac.uk
[SEE FIGURES IN ATTACHED DOCUMENT]
Understanding early development has a huge societal, economic and health impact. Over 5 million babies are born within the EU every year. How early development unfolds is a question that fascinates many new parents, but is also important for society as a whole. Individuals who do not develop in the typical fashion often fall behind in school, struggle to find employment and fail to fulfill their full economic and social potential. If we can spot those in difficulty early, we can intervene early and hopefully improve their prospects to the benefit of all involved.
The 7 Early Stage Researchers supported by this project used a combination of technologies to make a number of discoveries about how infants begin got make sense of the world around them.
For example, being able to predict what someone will do next is an important skill for cooperating with and understanding others. Some researchers have suggested that infants can only accurately predict another person’s on‐going action if they have experience with performing this action themselves. However, using the EEG techniques to measure electrical brain activity (FIGURE 1), we found that infants showed more motor cortex activation while watching upright stepping actions (actions we know they can predict) as compared to with when they watched inverted stepping actions (which we know they cannot predict). This suggests that infants were activating the motor areas of the brains when they were predicting how the stepping actions should continue, even though they did not yet have any experience performing this action themselves. We also used EEG methods to establish when infants realize that something has magically changed in the world, for example if an object re-appears from behind an occluder and has changed colours… is this normal? Is this unexpected and if so, for what class of objects is it normal or unexpected? Infants cannot tell us what they are thinking, but their brain activations can!
The ability to differentiate your own body from that of others is a fundamental skill, critical for humans’ ability to interact with their environments and the people in them. We know from adult studies that the integration of information from different senses is key to body awareness. But is this awareness present in newborns? To answer this question we measured brain oxygenation (through the use of NIRS techniques; FIGURE 2) and looking behaviours of 1‐ to 3‐day‐old newborns presented with a video of another baby’s face being touched on the cheek with a soft paintbrush, while the newborn’s corresponding cheek was either stroked at the same time or with a time delay. We found that the newborns expected the touch sensation in the location they had seen it to occur, and that they shared common brain mechanisms of body awareness with adults.
Although quite a lot is known about the advantageous effects of sleep in adults and older children, the role of sleep in infancy is still very poorly understood, even though young infants spend so much of their time asleep. We have been investigating which sleep patterns relate to the social and cognitive development of 4- to 10-month-olds. We are still analysing this large data set, but have so far found that sleep patterns change most between 4 and 6 months, and that more sleep is related to better memory abilities (FIGURE 3).
Eyes provide another window onto cognitive development. By studying gaze control, researchers can learn a great deal about developmental changes in decision-making. To this end, we followed two groups of babies from 3 to 6 months and from 6 to 12 months old in order to investigate how the control of eye movements develops over the first year of life. We found that at 3 months infants’ gaze is mainly driven by bottom-up factors such as colour or contrast, whereas from 4 months of age they start to use more complex viewing strategies, and adapt their eye‐movements to different viewing conditions. To help understand this transition, we developed a computer model of eye movement control in infants. Finally, in a large-scale behavioural genetic study, we explored the genetic markers of better visual attention and gaze control in infants, and asks how this relates to children’s subsequent inhibitory and self control skills as pre-schoolers.
Finally, brain and skill development co-occur outside infancy as well. Similar changes are observed in adults that transition from novice to expert in a skill intensive domain. Thus we studied expert musicians (violinists and pianists), contrasting their perceptual and cognitive performance with that of non-musicians. We collected structural MRI (brain imaging) data from both groups to relate individual and group differences in cortical myelination measured in vivo, to measures of perceptual and cognitive performance. This will allow us to ascertain how brain myelination (a process in swing flow during infancy) impacts on complex skill learning.
This project has successfully trained seven early stage researchers to PhD level, increasing their skill levels and employability. Five of the fellows were women, thereby helping to redress the imbalance that exists between genders in the life sciences.
Finally, the project has created a bridge between basic Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience research and commercial exploitation in the services, technology and product industries. While further collaborative work is required, this bridge barely existed before.
Further information can be found at:
http://www.cbcd.bbk.ac.uk/research/marie-curie-trackdev-1
Or by contacting the project coordinator, Professor Denis Mareschal,
email: d.mareschal@bbk.ac.uk
[SEE FIGURES IN ATTACHED DOCUMENT]