EAGER: COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Developmental mechanisms of perception and language in the infant brain

渴望：合作研究：婴儿大脑感知和语言的发育机制

• 批准号: 1514351
• 负责人: Richard Aslin
• 金额: $ 21.58万
• 依托单位: University of Rochester
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-05-15 至 2017-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1514351&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAGER; COLLABORATIVE; RESEARCH; Developmental; mechanisms

Understanding what infants understand about objects and words that they encounter in the world has been an important goal in developmental science, but the field understands relatively little about how infants perform either of these two tasks. Several neuroimaging methods have been used to determine how adult brains recognize familiar objects and words, but most of these methods are not suitable for use with infants. The goal of this research project is to deploy two neuroimaging methods that are amenable for use with infants, as a novel way to gain insights into the fundamental brain mechanisms that enable object recognition and word understanding in 3- to 12-month-old infants. One technique, electroencephalography (EEG) involves measuring electrical activity generated by the brain from sensors on the scalp. The other, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), shines near-infrared light through the skull and measures how it is absorbed by the brain at each location as an index of how active that part of the brain is. Recording both these measures while infants watch and listen to stimuli will provide important insights into how the infant brain processes this information.EEG has been in use with infants for many years, whereas functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a relatively newer non-invasive neuroimaging technique ideally suited for use with infants. fNIRS, like fMRI, provides a signature of metabolic activity in localized regions of the brain but is more suitable for infants because it delivers light to the scalp via a tight-fitting cap. In this project, EEG and fNIRS will be used to measure electrical and metabolic activity in the brain as infants watch objects of various categories such as vehicles or furniture, or listen to words that they know or do not know (or nonsense words). The key analysis tool is a suite of machine-learning algorithms from the field of computer science that take the EEG or fNIRS signals to determine which components of these signals best predict, on a trial by trial basis, what the infant was seeing or hearing.The outcome of the proposed research will localize in the brain where encoding of visual objects and spoken words takes place and over what time period after stimulus onset that processing occurs. These are fundamental aspects of object and language processing have eluded study in the human infant because of methodological challenges. Establishing protocols for analyzing data generated by these two methods will contribute to analytic techniques available for future infant brain research. Identifying normative properties of these processing mechanisms in the infant brain will set the stage for future research investigating how the developing brain is affected by variations in early experience, by compensation after injury, and by a variety of genetic anomalies.

了解婴儿对他们在世界上遇到的物体和单词的理解一直是发展科学的一个重要目标，但该领域对婴儿如何执行这两项任务中的任何一项都知之甚少。 几种神经成像方法已经被用来确定成年人的大脑如何识别熟悉的物体和单词，但这些方法中的大多数都不适合用于婴儿。 该研究项目的目标是部署两种适合婴儿使用的神经成像方法，作为一种新的方法来深入了解3至12个月大的婴儿能够识别物体和理解单词的基本大脑机制。一种技术，脑电图（EEG）涉及测量大脑从头皮上的传感器产生的电活动。另一种是功能性近红外光谱（fNIRS），它通过头骨照射近红外光，并测量大脑在每个位置的吸收情况，作为大脑该部分活跃程度的指标。记录这些措施，而婴儿观看和听刺激将提供重要的见解婴儿大脑如何处理这些信息。EEG已被用于婴儿多年，而功能近红外光谱（fNIRS）是一个相对较新的非侵入性神经成像技术，非常适合用于婴儿。fNIRS和fMRI一样，提供了大脑局部区域代谢活动的特征，但更适合婴儿，因为它通过一个紧密贴合的帽子将光传递到头皮。 在该项目中，EEG和fNIRS将用于测量婴儿在观看车辆或家具等各种类别的物体或听他们知道或不知道的单词（或无意义的单词）时大脑中的电和代谢活动。 关键的分析工具是一套来自计算机科学领域的机器学习算法，它采用EEG或fNIRS信号来确定这些信号的哪些成分最能预测，在试验的基础上，婴儿看到或听到了什么。拟议中的研究结果将定位于大脑中视觉物体和口语的编码发生的地方，以及刺激开始后的时间段，处理发生。这些都是物体和语言处理的基本方面，由于方法上的挑战，人类婴儿的研究一直没有进行。 建立这两种方法产生的数据分析协议将有助于未来的婴儿大脑研究的分析技术。 确定这些处理机制在婴儿大脑中的规范属性将为未来的研究奠定基础，研究发育中的大脑如何受到早期经验变化、损伤后补偿和各种遗传异常的影响。