The cognitive neuroscience of infant learning

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Brain development is modulated by learning and learning is modulated in turn by brain development. In the next five years of the research program, we will investigate the critical networks for habituation and the developmental evolution of their constituents. Habituation is the most primitive form of learning. In infant studies, habituation is measured by preferential looking paradigms: a single stimulus is presented for relatively brief periods across multiple trials until a significant looking time decline is observed. At the cellular level, habituation induces a decrease in neural response, a phenomenon known as repetition suppression (RS), which corresponds in scalp EEG to a reduction in induced gamma activity. High density EEG will therefore be used to investigate infants aged from 1 week to 7 months. We will first identify the neural systems in infants that are engaged by visual habituation and how these systems change with age. This should significantly advance our understanding of the brain signals required for learning during development, which will provide insights into rudimentary learning mechanisms in humans. Importantly, we will investigate the impact of the attentional systems on visual habituation with maturation. The relation between learning and attention is supported by previous studies. However, the development of their networks and their developmental interdependencies are not known. In addition, this research program aims to make significant progress in our understanding of how infants acquire and build knowledge. Accordingly, we will address the effect of prior exposure on visual habituation. This research will contribute to our understanding of the development of semantic knowledge, which is very robust during the lifetime, and will help us understand the interplay between previous knowledge and new acquisition.