Brain, Gene, and Environment Interactions in the Ontogeny of Early Helping Behavior

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Infants’ helping behavior is one of the earliest and best documented (pro)social behaviors in human development. Thus, the ontogenetic foundations of early helping are essential to our understanding of human unique capacities to care for and collaborate with each other. To date, the research on early helping behavior is mostly centered around psychological processes involved in the ontogeny and actual genesis of early helping, while critical determinants which precede humans’ earliest prosocial attainments (i.e., brain development, genetic makeup, and early environmental influences) and their interaction are not well understood. The overarching goal of the present study is to gain a better understanding of the association between early helping behavior and (1) infants’ brain development, and how (2) genetic and (3) environmental factors influence the development of critical brain networks associated with infants’ earliest prosocial attainments. Specifically, we propose an add-on study to an ongoing (and already funded) prospective longitudinal cohort study that includes 1) multi-modal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain in newborn and 1-year-old infants, (2) infant DNA samples, and (3) a behavioral observation of mother-infant interaction at 6 months of age. In this proposed add-on study, we will characterize infants’ helping behavior and the attainment of critical developmental skills (infants’ understanding of others’ needs, assessed in an eye-tracking paradigm, infants’ fine and gross motor abilities, and infants’ social interaction skills) that underlie the early development of helping behavior at 15 month-of-age. In addition, we will assess maternal socialization of helping behavior at 12-month-of-age. This add-on study will allow us to investigate the association between infants’ neural connectivity within a prosocial neural network (at 12 months) and its developmental trajectory within the first year of life (newborn to 12 months) with the development of early helping behavior and critical developmental skills associated with early helping behavior. Furthermore, we will test targeted genetic (i.e., polygenic score for cognitive empathy) and environmental factors (i.e., supportive social interaction with the mother at 6 and 12 months) that may be associated with infants’ brain development and, in consequence, the early ontogeny of helping behavior. This study will give us unprecedented insights into the determinants of human earliest prosocial capacities at the level of the brain, gene, and environment, as well as the interaction between these different levels.