Development of Neocortical and Vagal Function in Self-Regulation

该项目将研究大脑和心脏活动之间的神经系统协调如何在快速发展期（3- 5年）和广泛的家庭社会经济背景下调节思想、情绪和行为。自我调节是典型和非典型认知和社会情感发展的一个关键方面。该项目将推进关于大脑额叶如何更有效和高效地调节心脏活动的基础知识，以及这种脑-心协调如何影响自我调节的发育改善。作为这项工作的一部分，该项目将测试几个基础理论，并建立新的脑成像方法，这将有利于发展认知神经科学和生理学研究。大脑和心脏系统如何协调其功能的证据将推动早期发展自我调节的研究领域向更综合的系统视角发展。项目团队将与当地学校合作(1)提供包括评估大脑和心脏功能的任务和游戏在内的实践体验，以及(2)告诉学生神经和心血管系统如何协同工作来影响他们的学习。该小组还将与学校人员就这些主题举办专业发展研讨会，将研究成果转化为教学实践。更广泛地说，该项目的成果将有助于了解学龄前儿童发展的基本和实用知识，这些知识可被幼儿教育工作者和政策制定者应用，以改善美国各地的儿童发展成果。多迷走神经和神经内脏整合理论预测了对有效自我调节至关重要的神经和心血管因素的协调或整合的发育变化。为了验证这些理论，之前的研究已经确定了儿童早期的关键发育模式和预测因素，但这些工作通常分别关注大脑和心脏因素，而不是同时关注。因此，该项目将解决关于大脑活动和心率变异性（心脏调节的关键指标）之间关系的发育变化的知识空白，以及儿童早期认知和情绪调节行为的测量。这项研究的参与者将是200名儿童，他们来自不同种族和社会经济背景的社区，包括城市、郊区和农村。横断面设计将涉及比较3岁，4岁和5岁的孩子。儿童将到实验室完成认知和情绪调节任务，同时记录神经和心脏活动（使用功能性近红外光谱[fNIRS]和心电图[ECG]）。这项研究将确定神经、心脏和行为方面的自我调节指标如何在3- 5岁期间共同发展。该项目团队假设，拥有更高级自我调节技能的儿童在特定的大脑额叶区域会表现出更强的激活，心率变异性也会更高。此外，研究小组假设，由于发育变化，神经、心脏和行为自我调节指标在老年人和年轻人中要么显示出更强的关联（发育整合），要么显示出更弱的关联（发育专业化）。为了检验假设，数据将使用多元一般线性和结构方程模型进行分析。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project will investigate how nervous system coordination between brain and heart activity regulates thoughts, emotions and behaviors across a period of rapid development (3-to-5-years) and across a wide range of family socioeconomic contexts. Self-regulation is a key aspect of typical and atypical cognitive and social-emotional development. The project will advance basic knowledge about how the brain's frontal lobe develops to more effectively and efficiently regulate cardiac activity, and how this brain-heart coordination influences developmental improvements in self-regulation. As part of this effort, the project will test several foundational theories and establish novel brain imaging methods that will benefit developmental cognitive neuroscience and physiology research. Evidence of how brain and heart systems coordinate their functioning will move the field of research on early developing self-regulation toward a more integrated systems perspective. The project team will collaborate with local schools to (1)provide hands-on experiences involving tasks and games that assess brain and heart functioning, and (2)inform students how the nervous and cardiovascular systems work together to influence their learning. The team also will conduct professional development workshops on these topics with school personnel, to translate research results into teaching practices. More broadly, the results of the project will contribute to basic and practical knowledge about preschoolers' development that can be applied by early childhood educators and policymakers, to improve child development outcomes across the United States.Polyvagal and Neurovisceral Integration theories predict developmental changes in the coordination or integration of neural and cardiovascular factors that are essential to effective self-regulation. To test these theories, prior research has identified key developmental patterns and predictors in early childhood, but that work has generally focused on brain and cardiac factors separately rather than simultaneously. Therefore, this project will address gaps in knowledge about developmental changes in the associations between brain activity and heart rate variability (a key indicator of cardiac regulation), along with measures of cognitive and emotion regulation behaviors in early childhood. The study participants will be 200 children from an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse community that includes urban, suburban and rural settings. A cross-sectional design will involve comparing 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds. Children will visit the laboratory to complete cognitive and emotion regulation tasks, while neural and cardiac activity (using functional near-infrared spectroscopy [fNIRS] and electrocardiogram [ECG]) are both recorded. The study will identify how neural, cardiac, and behavioral indicators of self-regulation co-develop from 3-to-5-years of age. The project team hypothesizes that children with more advanced self-regulation skills will show stronger activation in specified frontal lobe brain regions as well as higher heart rate variability. In addition, the team hypothesizes that neural, cardiac and behavioral self-regulation indicators will show either stronger associations (developmental integration), or weaker associations (developmental specialization), at older versus younger ages due to developmental changes. To test the hypotheses, the data will be analyzed using multivariate general linear and structural equation modeling.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.