Cognitive control in infancy: Attentional predictors using a tablet-based measure.

Cognitive control is a predictor of later-life outcomes and may underpin higher order executive processes. The present study examines the development of early cognitive control during the first 24-month. We evaluated a tablet-based assessment of cognitive control among infants aged 18- and 24-month. We also examined concurrent and longitudinal associations between attentional disengagement, general cognitive skills and cognitive control. Participants (N = 60, 30 female) completed the tablet-task at 18- and 24-month of age. Attentional disengagement and general cognitive development were assessed at 5-, 8-, 12-, 18- and 24-month using an eye-tracking measure and the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL), respectively. The cognitive control task demonstrated good internal consistency, sensitivity to age-related change in performance and stable individual differences. No associations were found between infant cognitive control and MSEL scores longitudinally or concurrently. The eye-tracking task revealed that slower attentional disengagement at 8-month, but faster disengagement at 18-month, predicted higher cognitive control scores at 24-month. This task may represent a useful tool for measuring emergent cognitive control. The multifaceted relationship between attention and infant cognitive control suggests that the rapid development of the attentional system in infancy results in distinct attentional skills, at different ages, being relevant for cognitive control development.

Longitudinal fNIRS and EEG metrics of habituation and novelty detection are correlated in 1-18-month-old infants.

INTRODUCTION: Habituation and novelty detection are two fundamental and widely studied neurocognitive processes. Whilst neural responses to repetitive and novel sensory input have been well-documented across a range of neuroimaging modalities, it is not yet fully understood how well these different modalities are able to describe consistent neural response patterns. This is particularly true for infants and young children, as different assessment modalities might show differential sensitivity to underlying neural processes across age. Thus far, many neurodevelopmental studies are limited in either sample size, longitudinal scope or breadth of measures employed, impeding investigations of how well common developmental trends can be captured via different methods. METHOD: This study assessed habituation and novelty detection in N = 204 infants using EEG and fNIRS measured in two separate paradigms, but within the same study visit, at 1, 5 and 18 months of age in an infant cohort in rural Gambia. EEG was acquired during an auditory oddball paradigm during which infants were presented with Frequent, Infrequent and Trial Unique sounds. In the fNIRS paradigm, infants were familiarised to a sentence of infant-directed speech, novelty detection was assessed via a change in speaker. Indices for habituation and novelty detection were extracted for both EEG and NIRS RESULTS: We found evidence for weak to medium positive correlations between responses on the fNIRS and the EEG paradigms for indices of both habituation and novelty detection at most age points. Habituation indices correlated across modalities at 1 month and 5 months but not 18 months of age, and novelty responses were significantly correlated at 5 months and 18 months, but not at 1 month. Infants who showed robust habituation responses also showed robust novelty responses across both assessment modalities. DISCUSSION: This study is the first to examine concurrent correlations across two neuroimaging modalities across several longitudinal age points. Examining habituation and novelty detection, we show that despite the use of two different testing modalities, stimuli and timescale, it is possible to extract common neural metrics across a wide age range in infants. We suggest that these positive correlations might be strongest at times of greatest developmental change.

Executive functioning skills and their environmental predictors among pre-school aged children in South Africa and The Gambia.

Executive functions (EFs) in early childhood are predictors of later developmental outcomes and school readiness. Much of the research on EFs and their psychosocial correlates has been conducted in high-income, minority world countries, which represent a small and biased portion of children globally. The aim of this study is to examine EFs among children aged 3-5 years in two African countries, South Africa (SA) and The Gambia (GM), and to explore shared and distinct predictors of EFs in these settings. The SA sample (N = 243, 51.9% female) was recruited from low-income communities within the Cape Town Metropolitan area. In GM, participants (N = 171, 49.7% female) were recruited from the rural West Kiang region. EFs, working memory (WM), inhibitory control (IC) and cognitive flexibility (CF), were measured using tablet-based tasks. Associations between EF task performance and indicators of socioeconomic status (household assets, caregiver education) and family enrichment factors (enrichment activities, diversity of caregivers) were assessed. Participants in SA scored higher on all EF tasks, but children in both sites predominantly scored within the expected range for their age. There were no associations between EFs and household or familial variables in SA, except for a trend-level association between caregiver education and CF. Patterns were similar in GM, where there was a trend-level association between WM and enrichment activities but no other relationships. We challenge the postulation that children in low-income settings have poorer EFs, simply due to lower socioeconomic status, but highlight the need to identify predictors of EFs in diverse, global settings. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Assessed Executive Functioning (EF) skills and their psychosocial predictors among pre-school aged children (aged 3-5 years) in two African settings (The Gambia and South Africa). On average, children within each setting performed within the expected range for their age, although children in South Africa had higher scores across tasks. There was little evidence of any association between socioeconomic variables and EFs in either site. Enrichment activities were marginally associated with better working memory in The Gambia, and caregiver education with cognitive flexibility in South Africa, both associations were trend-level significance.

Giving birth in a pandemic: women's birth experiences in England during COVID-19.

BACKGROUND: Expectant parents worldwide have experienced changes in the way they give birth as a result of COVID-19, including restrictions relating to access to birthing units and the presence of birthing partners during the birth, and changes to birth plans. This paper reports the experiences of women in England. METHODS: Data were obtained from both closed- and open-ended responses collected as part of the national COVID in Context of Pregnancy, Infancy and Parenting (CoCoPIP) Study online survey (n = 477 families) between 15th July 2020 - 29th March 2021. Frequency data are presented alongside the results of a sentiment analysis; the open-ended data was analysed thematically. RESULTS: Two-thirds of expectant women reported giving birth via spontaneous vaginal delivery (SVD) (66.1%) and a third via caesarean section (CS) (32.6%) or 'other' (1.3%). Just under half (49.7%) of the CS were reported to have been elective/planned, with 47.7% being emergencies. A third (37.4%) of participants reported having no changes to their birth (as set out in their birthing plan), with a further 25% reporting COVID-related changes, and 37.4% reporting non-COVID related changes (e.g., changes as a result of birthing complications). One quarter of the sample reported COVID-related changes to their birth plan, including limited birthing options and reduced feelings of control; difficulties accessing pain-relief and assistance, and feelings of distress and anxiety. Under half of the respondents reported not knowing whether there could be someone present at the birth (44.8%), with 2.3% of respondents reporting no birthing partner being present due to COVID-related restrictions. Parental experiences of communication and advice provided by the hospital prior to delivery were mixed, with significant stress and anxiety being reported in relation to both the fluctuating guidance and lack of certainty regarding the presence of birthing partners at the birth. The sentiment analysis revealed that participant experiences of giving birth during the pandemic were predominately negative (46.9%) particularly in relation to the first national lockdown, with a smaller proportion of positive (33.2%) and neutral responses (19.9%). CONCLUSION: The proportion of parents reporting birthing interventions (i.e., emergency CS) was higher than previously reported, as were uncertainties related to the birth, and poor communication, leading to increased feelings of anxiety and high levels of negative emotions. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Expectant parents' perceptions of healthcare and support during COVID-19 in the UK: a thematic analysis.

BACKGROUND: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, expectant parents experienced changes in the availability and uptake of both National Health Service (NHS) community and hospital-based healthcare. OBJECTIVE: To examine how COVID-19 and its societal related restrictions have impacted the provision of healthcare support for pregnant women during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHOD: A thematic analysis using an inductive approach was undertaken using data from open-ended responses to the national COVID in Context of Pregnancy, Infancy and Parenting (CoCoPIP) Study online survey (n = 507 families). FINDINGS: The overarching theme identified was the way in which the changes to healthcare provision increased parents' anxiety levels, and feelings of not being supported. Five sub-themes, associated with the first wave of the pandemic, were identified: (1) rushed and/or fewer antenatal appointments, (2) lack of sympathy from healthcare workers, (3) lack of face-to-face appointments, (4) requirement to attend appointments without a partner, and (5) requirement to use PPE. A sentiment analysis, that used quantitative techniques, revealed participant responses to be predominantly negative (50.1%), with a smaller proportion of positive (21.8%) and neutral (28.1%) responses found. CONCLUSION: This study provides evidence indicating that the changes to healthcare services for pregnant women during the pandemic increased feelings of anxiety and have left women feeling inadequately supported. Our findings highlight the need for compensatory social and emotional support for new and expectant parents while COVID-19 related restrictions continue to impact on family life and society.

Longitudinal infant fNIRS channel-space analyses are robust to variability parameters at the group-level: An image reconstruction investigation.

The first 1000 days from conception to two-years of age are a critical period in brain development, and there is an increasing drive for developing technologies to help advance our understanding of neurodevelopmental processes during this time. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has enabled longitudinal infant brain function to be studied in a multitude of settings. Conventional fNIRS analyses tend to occur in the channel-space, where data from equivalent channels across individuals are combined, which implicitly assumes that head size and source-detector positions (i.e. array position) on the scalp are constant across individuals. The validity of such assumptions in longitudinal infant fNIRS analyses, where head growth is most rapid, has not previously been investigated. We employed an image reconstruction approach to analyse fNIRS data collected from a longitudinal cohort of infants in The Gambia aged 5- to 12-months. This enabled us to investigate the effect of variability in both head size and array position on the anatomical and statistical inferences drawn from the data at both the group- and the individual-level. We also sought to investigate the impact of group size on inferences drawn from the data. We found that variability in array position was the driving factor between differing inferences drawn from the data at both the individual- and group-level, but its effect was weakened as group size increased towards the full cohort size (N = 53 at 5-months, N = 40 at 8-months and N = 45 at 12-months). We conclude that, at the group sizes in our dataset, group-level channel-space analysis of longitudinal infant fNIRS data is robust to assumptions about head size and array position given the variability in these parameters in our dataset. These findings support a more widespread use of image reconstruction techniques in longitudinal infant fNIRS studies.

Functional imaging of the developing brain with wearable high-density diffuse optical tomography: A new benchmark for infant neuroimaging outside the scanner environment.

Studies of cortical function in the awake infant are extremely challenging to undertake with traditional neuroimaging approaches. Partly in response to this challenge, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has become increasingly common in developmental neuroscience, but has significant limitations including resolution, spatial specificity and ergonomics. In adults, high-density arrays of near-infrared sources and detectors have recently been shown to yield dramatic improvements in spatial resolution and specificity when compared to typical fNIRS approaches. However, most existing fNIRS devices only permit the acquisition of ~20-100 sparsely distributed fNIRS channels, and increasing the number of optodes presents significant mechanical challenges, particularly for infant applications. A new generation of wearable, modular, high-density diffuse optical tomography (HD-DOT) technologies has recently emerged that overcomes many of the limitations of traditional, fibre-based and low-density fNIRS measurements. Driven by the development of this new technology, we have undertaken the first study of the infant brain using wearable HD-DOT. Using a well-established social stimulus paradigm, and combining this new imaging technology with advances in cap design and spatial registration, we show that it is now possible to obtain high-quality, functional images of the infant brain with minimal constraints on either the environment or on the infant participants. Our results are consistent with prior low-density fNIRS measures based on similar paradigms, but demonstrate superior spatial localization, improved depth specificity, higher SNR and a dramatic improvement in the consistency of the responses across participants. Our data retention rates also demonstrate that this new generation of wearable technology is well tolerated by the infant population.

ERP markers are associated with neurodevelopmental outcomes in 1-5 month old infants in rural Africa and the UK.

INTRODUCTION: Infants and children in low- and middle-income countries are frequently exposed to a range of poverty-related risk factors, increasing their likelihood of poor neurodevelopmental outcomes. There is a need for culturally objective markers, which can be used to study infants from birth, thereby enabling early identification and ultimately intervention during a critical time of neurodevelopment. METHOD: In this paper, we investigate developmental changes in auditory event related potentials (ERP) associated with habituation and novelty detection in infants between 1 and 5 months living in the United Kingdom and The Gambia, West Africa. Previous research reports that whereas newborns' ERP responses are increased when presented with stimuli of higher intensity, this sensory driven response decreases over the first few months of life, giving rise to a cognitively driven, novelty-based response. Anthropometric measures were obtained concurrently with the ERP measures at 1 and 5 months of age. Neurodevelopmental outcome was measured using the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL) at 5 months of age. RESULTS: The described developmental change was observed in the UK cohort, who exhibited an intensity-based response at 1 month and a novelty-based response at 5 months of age. This change was accompanied by greater habituation to stimulus intensity at 5 compared to 1 month. In the Gambian cohort we did not see a change from an intensity-to a novelty-based response, and no change in habituation to stimulus intensity across the two age points. The degree of change from an intensity towards a novelty-based response was further found to be associated with MSEL scores at 5 months of infant age, whereas infants' growth between 1 and 5 months was not. DISCUSSION: Our study highlights the utility of ERP-based markers to study young infants in rural Africa. By implementing a well-established paradigm in a previously understudied population we have demonstrated its use as a culturally objective tool to better understand early learning in diverse settings world-wide. Results offer insight into the neurodevelopmental processes underpinning early neurocognitive development, which may in the future contribute to early identification of infants at heightened risk of adverse neurodevelopmental outcome.

Habituation and novelty detection fNIRS brain responses in 5- and 8-month-old infants: The Gambia and UK.

The first 1,000 days of life are a critical window of vulnerability to exposure to socioeconomic and health challenges (i.e. poverty/undernutrition). The Brain Imaging for Global Health (BRIGHT) project has been established to deliver longitudinal measures of brain development from 0 to 24 months in UK and Gambian infants and to assess the impact of early adversity. Here results from the Habituation-Novelty Detection (HaND) functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) task at 5 and 8 months are presented (N = 62 UK; N = 115 Gambia). In the UK cohort distinct patterns of habituation and recovery of response to novelty are seen, becoming more robust from 5 to 8 months of age. In The Gambia, an attenuated habituation response is evident: a larger number of trials are required before the response sufficiently suppresses relative to the response during the first presented trials. Furthermore, recovery of response to novelty is not evident at 5 or 8 months of age. As this longitudinal study continues in The Gambia, the parallel collection of socioeconomic, caregiving, health and nutrition data will allow us to stratify how individual trajectories of habituation and recovery of response to novelty associate with different risk factors and adaptive mechanisms in greater depth. Given the increasing interest in the use of neuroimaging methods within global neurocognitive developmental studies, this study provides a novel cross-culturally appropriate paradigm for the study of brain responses associated with attention and learning mechanisms across early development.

Adaptation of the Mullen Scales of Early Learning for use among infants aged 5- to 24-months in rural Gambia.

Infants in low-resource settings are at heightened risk for compromised cognitive development due to a multitude of environmental insults in their surroundings. However, the onset of adverse outcomes and trajectory of cognitive development in these settings is not well understood. The aims of the present study were to adapt the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL) for use with infants in a rural area of The Gambia, to examine cognitive development in the first 24-months of life and to assess the association between cognitive performance and physical growth. In Phase 1 of this study, the adapted MSEL was tested on 52 infants aged 9- to 24-months (some of whom were tested longitudinally at two time points). Further optimization and training were undertaken and Phase 2 of the study was conducted, where the original measures were administered to 119 newly recruited infants aged 5- to 24-months. Infant length, weight and head circumference were measured concurrently in both phases. Participants from both phases were split into age categories of 5-9 m (N = 32), 10-14 m (N = 92), 15-19 m (N = 53) and 20-24 m (N = 43) and performance was compared across age groups. From the ages of 10-14 m, Gambian infants obtained lower MSEL scores than US norms. Performance decreased with age and was lowest in the 20-24 m old group. Differential onsets of reduced performance were observed in the individual MSEL domains, with declines in visual perception and motor performance detected as early as at 10-14 months, while reduced language scores became evident after 15-19 months of age. Performance on the MSEL was significantly associated with measures of growth.

Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy to assess social information processing in poor urban Bangladeshi infants and toddlers.

Children living in low-resource settings are at risk for failing to reach their developmental potential. While the behavioral outcomes of growing up in such settings are well-known, the neural mechanisms underpinning poor outcomes have not been well elucidated, particularly in the context of low- and middle-income countries. In this study, we measure brain metabolic responses to social and nonsocial stimuli in a cohort of 6- and 36-month-old Bangladeshi children. Study participants in both cohorts lived in an urban slum and were exposed to a broad range of adversity early in life including extreme poverty, malnutrition, recurrent infections, and low maternal education. We observed brain regions that responded selectively to social stimuli in both ages indicating that these specialized brain responses are online from an early age. We additionally show that the magnitude of the socially selective response is related to maternal education, maternal stress, and the caregiving environment. Ultimately our results suggest that a variety of psychosocial hazards have a measurable relationship with the developing social brain.

Diminished socially selective neural processing in 5-month-old infants at high familial risk of autism.

The social and communicative difficulties that characterize autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are considered the most striking feature of the disorder. Research has reported that individuals with ASD show abnormalities in the brain regions associated with the processing of social information. Importantly, a recent study using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) found the first evidence of atypicalities in the neural processing of social information in 4- to 6-month-old infants at high familial risk of ASD. These findings provide an important step in the search for early markers of ASD and highlight the potential for neuroimaging techniques to detect atypical patterns of neural activity prior to the manifestation of most behavioural symptoms. This study aimed to extend the findings of reduced neural sensitivity to social stimuli in an independent cohort. Twenty-nine 5-month-old infants (13 low-risk infants, 16 high-risk infants) were presented with social and non-social visual stimuli, similar to the previous experiment. Importantly, a non-social dynamic motion control condition was introduced allowing the comparison between social dynamic and non-social, static, as well as dynamic stimuli. We found that while low-risk infants showed activation to social stimuli in the right posterior temporal cortex, this activation was reduced in infants at high risk of ASD. Although the current sample size was relatively small, our results replicate and extend previous work and provide evidence for a social processing difference in infants at risk of autism. Future research will determine whether these differences relate to an eventual ASD diagnosis or may rather reflect the broader autism phenotype.

Convergent and Divergent fMRI Responses in Children and Adults to Increasing Language Production Demands.

In adults, patterns of neural activation associated with perhaps the most basic language skill--overt object naming--are extensively modulated by the psycholinguistic and visual complexity of the stimuli. Do children's brains react similarly when confronted with increasing processing demands, or they solve this problem in a different way? Here we scanned 37 children aged 7-13 and 19 young adults who performed a well-normed picture-naming task with 3 levels of difficulty. While neural organization for naming was largely similar in childhood and adulthood, adults had greater activation in all naming conditions over inferior temporal gyri and superior temporal gyri/supramarginal gyri. Manipulating naming complexity affected adults and children quite differently: neural activation, especially over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, showed complexity-dependent increases in adults, but complexity-dependent decreases in children. These represent fundamentally different responses to the linguistic and conceptual challenges of a simple naming task that makes no demands on literacy or metalinguistics. We discuss how these neural differences might result from different cognitive strategies used by adults and children during lexical retrieval/production as well as developmental changes in brain structure and functional connectivity.

Cortical activation to action perception is associated with action production abilities in young infants.

The extent to which perception and action share common neural processes is much debated in cognitive neuroscience. Taking a developmental approach to this issue allows us to assess whether perceptual processing develops in close association with the emergence of related action skills within the same individual. The current study used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to investigate the perception of human action in 4- to 6-month-old human infants. In addition, the infants' manual dexterity was assessed using the fine motor component of The Mullen Scales of Early Learning and an in-house developed Manual Dexterity task. Results show that the degree of cortical activation, within the posterior superior temporal sulcus--temporoparietal junction (pSTS-TPJ) region, to the perception of manual actions in individual infants correlates with their own level of fine motor skills. This association was not fully explained by either measures of global attention (i.e., looking time) or general developmental stage. This striking concordance between the emergence of motor skills and related perceptual processing within individuals is consistent with experience-related cortical specialization in the developing brain.

Goal representation in the infant brain.

It is well established that, from an early age, human infants interpret the movements of others as actions directed towards goals. However, the cognitive and neural mechanisms which underlie this ability are hotly debated. The current study was designed to identify brain regions involved in the representation of others' goals early in development. Studies with adults have demonstrated that the anterior intraparietal sulcus (aIPS) exhibits repetition suppression for repeated goals and a release from suppression for new goals, implicating this specific region in goal representation in adults. In the current study, we used a modified paired repetition suppression design with 9-month-old infants to identify which cortical regions are suppressed when the infant observes a repeated goal versus a new goal. We find a strikingly similar response pattern and location of activity as had been reported in adults; the only brain region displaying significant repetition suppression for repeated goals and a release from suppression for new goals was the left anterior parietal region. Not only does our data suggest that the left anterior parietal region is specialized for representing the goals of others' actions from early in life, this demonstration presents an opportunity to use this method and design to elucidate the debate over the mechanisms and cues which contribute to early action understanding.

Trajectories of brain and behaviour development in the womb, at birth and through infancy.

Birth is often seen as the starting point for studying effects of the environment on human development, with much research focused on the capacities of young infants. However, recent imaging advances have revealed that the complex behaviours of the fetus and the uterine environment exert influence. Birth is now viewed as a punctuate event along a developmental pathway of increasing autonomy of the child from their mother. Here we highlight (1) increasing physiological autonomy and perceptual sensitivity in the fetus, (2) physiological and neurochemical processes associated with birth that influence future behaviour, (3) the recalibration of motor and sensory systems in the newborn to adapt to the world outside the womb and (4) the effect of the prenatal environment on later infant behaviours and brain function. Taken together, these lines of evidence move us beyond nature-nurture issues to a developmental human lifespan view beginning within the womb.

It takes a village: Caregiver diversity and language contingency in the UK and rural Gambia.

INTRODUCTION: There is substantial diversity within and between contexts globally in caregiving practices and family composition, which may have implications for the early interaction's infants engage in. We draw on data from the Brain Imaging for Global Health (BRIGHT, www.globalfnirs.org/the-bright-project) project, which longitudinally examined infants in the UK and in rural Gambia, West Africa. In The Gambia, households are commonly characterized by multigenerational, frequently polygamous family structures, which, in part, is reflected in the diversity of caregivers a child spends time with. In this paper, we aim to 1) evaluate and validate the Language Environment Analysis (LENA) for use in the Mandinka speaking families in The Gambia, 2) examine the nature (i.e., prevalence of turn taking) and amount (i.e., adult and child vocalizations) of conversation that infants are exposed to from 12 to 24 months of age and 3) investigate the link between caregiver diversity and child language outcomes, examining the mediating role of contingent turn taking. METHOD: We obtained naturalistic seven-hour-long LENA recordings at 12, 18 and 24 months of age from a cohort of N = 204 infants from Mandinka speaking households in The Gambia and N = 61 infants in the UK. We examined developmental changes and site differences in LENA counts of adult word counts (AWC), contingent turn taking (CTT) and child vocalizations (CVC). In the larger and more heterogenous Gambian sample, we also investigated caregiver predictors of turn taking frequency. We hereby examined the number of caregivers present over the recording day and the consistency of caregivers across two subsequent days per age point. We controlled for children's cognitive development via the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL). RESULTS: Our LENA validation showed high internal consistency between the human coders and automated LENA outputs (Cronbach's alpha's all >.8). All LENA counts were higher in the UK compared to the Gambian cohort. In The Gambia, controlling for overall neurodevelopment via the MSEL, CTT at 12 and 18 months predicted CVC at 18 and 24 months. Caregiver consistency was associated with CTT counts at 18 and 24 months. The number of caregivers and CTT counts showed an inverted u-shape relationship at 18 and 24 months, with an intermediate number of caregivers being associated with the highest CTT frequencies. Mediation analyses showed a partial mediation by number of caregivers and CTT and 24-month CVC. DISCUSSION: The LENA provided reliable estimates for the Mandinka language in the home recording context. We showed that turn taking is associated with subsequent child vocalizations and explored contextual caregiving factors contributing to turn taking in the Gambian cohort.

Growth in early infancy drives optimal brain functional connectivity which predicts cognitive flexibility in later childhood.

Functional brain network organization, measured by functional connectivity (FC), reflects key neurodevelopmental processes for healthy development. Early exposure to adversity, e.g. undernutrition, affects neurodevelopment, observable via disrupted FC, and leads to poorer outcomes from preschool age onward. We assessed longitudinally the impact of early growth trajectories on developmental FC in a rural Gambian population from age 5 to 24 months. To investigate how these early trajectories relate to later childhood outcomes, we assessed cognitive flexibility at 3-5 years. We observed that early physical growth before the fifth month of life drove optimal developmental trajectories of FC that in turn predicted cognitive flexibility at pre-school age. In contrast to previously studied developmental populations, this Gambian sample exhibited long-range interhemispheric FC that decreased with age. Our results highlight the measurable effects that poor growth in early infancy has on brain development and the subsequent impact on pre-school age cognitive development, underscoring the need for early life interventions throughout global settings of adversity.

Cortical mapping of 3D optical topography in infants.

Precise localisation of cortical activation in the early development of the infant brain remains unclear. It is challenging to co-register haemodynamic responses during functional activation in infants with the underlying anatomy of the brain. We used a multispectral imaging algorithm to reconstruct 3D optical topographic images of haemodynamic responses in an infant during voice processing. In this chapter, we present a method for co-registering 3D optical topography images reconstructed from functional activation data in infants onto anatomical brain images obtained from MRI structurals of the individual infants.

Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy to study the early developing brain: future directions and new challenges.

Significance: Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a frequently used neuroimaging tool to explore the developing brain, particularly in infancy, with studies spanning from birth to toddlerhood (0 to 2 years). We provide an overview of the challenges and opportunities that the developmental fNIRS field faces, after almost 25 years of research. Aim: We discuss the most recent advances in fNIRS brain imaging with infants and outlines the trends and perspectives that will likely influence progress in the field in the near future. Approach: We discuss recent progress and future challenges in various areas and applications of developmental fNIRS from methodological and technological innovations to data processing and statistical approaches. Results and Conclusions: The major trends identified include uses of fNIRS "in the wild," such as global health contexts, home and community testing, and hyperscanning; advances in hardware, such as wearable technology; assessment of individual variation and developmental trajectories particularly while embedded in studies examining other environmental, health, and context specific factors and longitudinal designs; statistical advances including resting-state network and connectivity, machine learning and reproducibility, and collaborative studies. Standardization and larger studies have been, and will likely continue to be, a major goal in the field, and new data analysis techniques, statistical methods, and collaborative cross-site projects are emerging.