Neural correlates of prosocial behavior in infancy: different neurophysiological mechanisms support the emergence of helping and comforting.

The present study examined the neural processes related to different forms of prosocial behavior in infancy by means of a longitudinal study. At 14months, infants' resting state brain activation asymmetries were assessed by means of EEG. At 18months, we examined infants' instrumental helping, and at 24months infants' behavior in a comforting task. Behavioral analyses revealed a negative relation between infants' performances in the helping and comforting task. The EEG analysis showed that distinct neural patterns were related to each task. Greater left frontal cortical activation was associated with infants' understanding of the other's distress as well as empathic responding in the comforting task, whereas greater right temporal activation was related to infants' instrumental helping. These findings reveal the neural correlates of the earliest forms of prosocial action and show that different neurophysiological activation patterns are related to the emergence of instrumental helping and comforting in early development.

Distinct neural correlates underlying pretense and false belief reasoning: evidence from ERPs.

Two important milestones characterize the development of a theory of mind (ToM): The emergence of pretend play (PT) in which infants as young as 18 months separate the real world from fictional or imagined worlds. And the explicit understanding of false beliefs (FB) which develops around the age of about 4 years and demands a differentiation between mental states and reality. Although there is an outstanding debate about whether or not PT play involves metarepresentation understanding, to date, the neural correlates of FB and PT reasoning have not been investigated within one paradigm. The present study investigated PT and FB in comparison to reality understanding (RE) in an ERP paradigm presenting cartoon stories to 24 healthy adults. Results revealed a sequence of ERP components that distinguished between the conditions. PT compared to FB and RE was associated with a higher P2-amplitude at parieto-occipital sites and a late slow wave divergence (270-600 ms) at left frontal and left posterior positions. These components may indicate the processing of incongruity between the protagonist's knowledge and behavior and the identifying of the intentional character of the pretended action. In accordance with previous ERP studies on FB reasoning, we found late anterior activation (600-900 ms) for FB reasoning, probably indicating the decoupling mechanism involved in metarepresentation. These temporal and topographic differences indicate distinct underlying neural substrates for FB and PT processing, and do not support metarepresentational interpretations of PT.

Long-term stability in children's frontal EEG alpha asymmetry between 14-months and 83-months.

In the present study, we investigated the test-retest stability of resting state alpha asymmetry in 18 children (9 male and 9 female) in a longitudinal design. Children's resting state brain activation asymmetries were assessed by means of EEG first after 14 months of age, and again a second time at 83 months of age, and frontal (AsymF), temporal (AsymT), and parietal (AsymP) alpha activation asymmetries were calculated. Analyses demonstrate positive relations between frontal asymmetry scores at 14 and 83 months of age. Temporal and parietal asymmetries did not show this stability over time. This finding provides further support for the use of frontal alpha asymmetry measures to investigate processes underlying emotion and motivation in childhood, and its stability over time.

The influence of inhibitory processes on affective theory of mind in young and old adults.

The primary aim of this study was to examine the impact of an inhibition manipulation on the effect of age on theory of mind (ToM) in an ecologically valid, affective ToM task. Participants were 30 young and 30 old adults. The Cambridge Mindreading Face-Voice Battery was used to measure ToM; in addition, measures of fluid and crystallized intelligence were taken. Participants were subjected to three levels of inhibitory demand during ToM reasoning: emotional inhibition, non-emotional inhibition, and no inhibition. Old adults performed worse than young adults. The emotional and non-emotional inhibition conditions resulted in worse ToM performance compared to the no inhibition condition. There were no differences in the impact of the inhibition conditions on old and young adults. Regression analyses suggested that old adults' crystallized intelligence was a significant predictor of ToM performance, whereas it did not predict young adults' ToM performance. Results are discussed in terms of verbal ability as a possible compensatory mechanism in coping with verbal inhibitory load in ToM reasoning.