5 greatest hits of neurocognitive methods for developmental research

Doing good research requires getting good data from the babies who come to visit us in the lab. Babies are wiggly and often have their own plans, so sometimes we need to get creative. Flexibility and highly specialised knowledge are the keys to getting the information we need. Happy baby = good data = happy researcher!

I recently went on a summer training course in Holland called “Neurocognitive Methods in Infant and Toddler Research.” Professionals and students came from all around the world to learn about the different ways we can get developmental data from little humans. Instead of sending YOU on a 5-day course, we decided to summarise the important bits here (with pictures)!

METHOD #1: Electroencephalogram (aka EEG)

The first method we learned is called ‘electroencephalography’ or ‘EEG’ for short. We’ve written a post about this method a while ago – you can check it out here to learn more.

EEG looks something like this, though this picture is a bit dated. Our brain’s cells, called neurons, fire in coordinated clumps that these sensors can measure. Measuring the clumps of firing neurons while baby watches movies, listens to sounds, or even interacts with others can tell us more about how baby is processing information from the outside world. Prof Emily Jones from the CBCD explained that you can measure 3 main things with EEG:

1. Speed of processing, aka: when the baby begins to interpret the stimulus?

2. Connectivity, aka: how are baby’s different brain regions working together during a task?

3. Oscillations, aka: what are baby’s brain waves doing when they are working hard?

The brain signals we see from an EEG look something like this. Each line shows the brain wave data of one sensor. We can’t interpret much from data that looks like this. We can only draw conclusions from lots of data over lots of infants.

The EEG sensors look something like this. Each circle represents a sensor that is collecting data as demonstrated by a line on the chart with all the “blips.” There’s a lot to keep track of when you’re using this technique — you have to make sure all the sensors are picking up good data from baby’s head instead of random noise. It can be tricky! But with patience, careful attention, and lots of averaging over lots of participants, we can see how baby’s brain processes all kinds of things!

METHOD #2: Behavioural Techniques

Next, we learned about behavioural techniques from Prof Celeste Kidd of University of California, Berkeley. ‘Behavioural techniques’ is a fancy way of saying that we’re not looking at the brain at all but instead carefully observing baby’s behaviour during certain tasks.

One of my favourite techniques is called the ‘Violations of Expectation’ paradigm. Basically, we can assume that if a baby sees something they think is impossible, they should show a reaction of surprise. By looking for ‘surprise’, we can investigate what baby thinks is possible and impossible!

A lot of times, a baby shows surprise by increasing the amount that they look at a certain event. In this lecture, Prof Kidd reminded us to be careful when we make this assumption. At some ages and in response to some stimuli, babies actually show ‘familiarity effects.’ This means that they look more at things they prefer, such as mum compared to a stranger. Researchers who use behavioural methods like ‘surprise’ and ‘familiarity’ studies should always be careful about how they interpret the behaviours they observe.

METHOD #3: Eye-tracking

Now for eye-tracking with Jacco van Elst (see this past blog post about eye-tracking). Hypothetically, this one is really easy – all our kiddos need to do is sit in front of a TV screen and watch some cartoons. Sounds easy enough, right?

Well, the trick is that our TV screen measures the movement of baby’s eyes. In order for our screen to ‘see’ baby’s eyes, we need it at just the right height, distance, and angle. And, of course, baby squirms! Sometimes we need to adjust the TV screen as the experiment goes on in order to make sure we get the best quality data possible.

Well, the trick is that our TV screen measures the movement of baby’s eyes. In order for our screen to ‘see’ baby’s eyes, we need it at just the right height, distance, and angle. And, of course, baby squirms! Sometimes we need to adjust the TV screen as the experiment goes on in order to make sure we get the best quality data possible.

How exactly does the eye-tracker ‘see’ baby’s eyes? It depends on the eye-tracker. But the idea is that it measures the location of the whites of the eyes compared with the dark pupils. Then, when baby looks from left to right, the computer uses complicated algorithms to measure the distance between the start and end points. Crazy, right!? This gives us complicated (but cool!) data about how baby’s eyes scan whatever we put on the TV screen.

METHOD #4: Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (aka fNIRS)

This technique should be familiar to a lot of you as we have a lot of blog posts on it! You can reference Prof Sarah Lloyd-Fox’s work in The Gambia, Dr Carina de Klerk and Dr Chiara Bulgarelli’s descriptions of their preferred method, and Dr Evelyne Mercure’s research on language development. In this workshop, we learned from the magnificent Dr Carlijn van den Boomen. She described fNIRS in some warm, yummy terms with the example of a cup of tea.

fNIRS caps look something like this. It looks similar to EEG, right? The difference is that while EEG sensors measure the electricity generated by the brain over the scalp, fNIRS sensors shine tiny lights onto the scalp. Well, that’s not exactly true: half of the sensors shine tiny lights while the other half receive tiny bits of light. fNIRS lights are weak — they do not get hot or cause baby any discomfort. Imagine you have a clear cup filled with weak tea. If you shine a flashlight through it, some light will be absorbed by the tea and some will pass right through it, right? Now imagine you have another clear cup full of tea, but this cup is properly dark. If you shine a flashlight through this cup, less light will make it out on the other side, right? This analogy may seem overly simplified, but this is exactly how fNIRS works. Blood in active regions of the brain is called ‘oxygenated,’ meaning it contains more oxygen and is lighter in colour. Blood in ‘quiet’ regions of the brain is called ‘deoxygenated’ and is darker in colour. So, more light can pass through the oxygenated blood which is found in regions of the brain that are working hard. All that fNIRS does is send light into the brain and measures what light comes out. Based on these properties of blood flow, we can use fNIRS data to see what regions of the brain are active during certain tasks.

METHOD #5: Magnetic Resonance Imaging (aka MRI)

Last up on the course was Prof Manon Benders, an MRI specialist at UMC Utrecht. MRI is a less common technique for measuring infant development because they’re best used for long tasks with a still, calm participant — does this sound like any infants you know?! Still, some people do use it for developmental research: check out this blog post on adolescent research. MRI can be used in some cases, however, particularly when there is good medical justification for doing the scans.

MRI machines look like gigantic marshmallows. In order to get data from an MRI, the participant needs to lay still while their heads go into the gigantic marshmallow. The machine is essentially a big, loud magnet. Researchers often give baby two sets of earplugs to protect them from the noise! Then they get swaddled up and kept warm with many pillows and blankets. Once baby is warm, comfy, and soundly asleep, they don’t mind being in the big marshmallow at all! Surrounded by a team of specialists, they are entirely safe and tucked in for their scanning session.

MRIs give us beautiful pictures of the developing brain. Check out the differences between these brains at 1 week, 3 months, and 1 year! All of the white stuff shows neurons that are developing for specific purposes (e.g., language, vision, motor movements, and so much more). While these scans tend to be reserved for medical purposes because they are challenging to do, they can still give us a great idea about how the brain is wiring, changing, and specialising with time.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! You now know the basics of the most popular methods we use for infant and toddler research. We hope you keep learning about all the ways you can watch baby’s magnificent growth!

Author: Victoria Mousley

Mother's brains and emotions

Inspirations form Neuroscience to use them well.

Another fab article from one of our favorites Neuroscience lab with tons of inspiration for expectant and new mothers. Two years ago, Elseline Hoekzema and her colleagues have given a picture of the structural changes that happen in the brain during pregnancy and how they relate to the new tasks mothers have to perform. We have summed it up here, marveling at the powers that the brain can acquire. They are nothing short from superpowers, helping the mother see the world from the child’s point of view and feel the child’s needs in her own self.

Now the same group of neuroscientists is looking into how these changes are linked with mental health, in particular with Post-Natal Depression, Post-Natal Anxiety and Post-Natal Psychosis. While these conditions are much more widespread than we might assume, they have something to teach even to those of us who do not suffer from clinical conditions. After all, acquiring superpower comes with its challenges for everyone!

We recommend you read the article by Barba Müller and colleagues because it really brings together so much research that has easy-to-implement implications to improve the lives of mothers and their babies. Here we just mention the issues that nobody should ignore.

EMOTIONS EMOTIONS

Babies can’t regulate their emotion. Sleep deprivation makes it more difficult to regulate one’s emotion for adults too. This means that we often end up with emotion overload and we can get the feeling that we are navigating from one crisis to the next, maybe looking for a temporary quick fix from sugar and caffeine (Been there. Done that).

Rutheford and colleagues tell us that the mother, in order to help her infant to integrate his/her emotions, must first effectively regulate her own emotional arousal and coordinate it with thoughts, actions, and interactions. So, what if we learned to NOTICE when we are “surprised” (ok… this might be a euphemism) by our child’s lack of consideration and by how unreasonable all her requests seem to be? If we learned to take that feeling of frustration as a “hold on” sign. If we learned to associate that with looking away for a moment from the child and into our own emotional world?

If we asked people around us to support us do just that, rather than short-term fixing issue after issue (or even worse, giving us unpracticable advice)? It might be the perfect occasion to look into our own emotional pattern and needs, to make sense of them, to see how we can address them in our lives and how we live them out in relation to other people. We might find that taking care of that will automatically make our child crazy requests seem less intolerable.

Practicing emotional awareness and regulation can be a great help against post-natal depression and anxiety, which we know affect almost 50% of the new mothers.

A BRAIN THAT WORKS AS A TEAM

To be a mum means to use the most sophisticated bit of our brain (for instance the ability to attribute mental states to our self or others, aka “social intelligence”), while responding to the most basic impulses from the part of the brain that we share with all mammals (for instance feeding  our offspring).

• Nappy changing & Time Management

• Cuddles & Identity Searching

• Round-the-clock feeding & Family Mediation

• Comforting & Career Management

A mother often masters all of those and is required to swiftly switch from one to the other. With a smile. And no extra fat, please. Nothing against smiles and healthy bodies, but let’s face it: some things are more important than others… and making the most of our brain for the sake of our offspring and for our own seems to belong pretty high up.

Young and colleagues tell us that when prefrontal and subcortical regions enjoy good cross-regulation, the mother shows more adaptive behaviour towards her baby.

Now let us unpack this: Prefrontal areas are the ones involved in the all that comes after the “&” in the list above – the “sophisticated stuff”. Subcortical regions have to do with what comes before the “&” – the “animal stuff”. Examples of more adaptive behaviour are enhanced sensitivity to the child’s voice, positive parenting thoughts, high-quality mother-child relationship, reduced avoidance, reduced hostility. What does this all mean? That we will be better mothers (and enjoy being it!) if the different parts of our brain work together as a team. Being clever will not be enough. Following our instinct will not be enough either. We can be (we must be!) both sophisticated and animal at the same time.

• Delicate & Fierce

• Alert & Reassuring

• Receptive & Stimulating

• Accepting & Encouraging

Knowing that this is one of the most important things we have to work on (rather than, for instance, having a baby that sleeps to the night or a child that has impeccable table manners) will help us prioritize our efforts. Bringing together our knowledge and our instinct is not only possible, but it is also the essential work of a mother. Maternity has given us the superpower of a brain where the animal and the sophisticated parts can work as a team.

Let us own up to it! Let us practice with it! Let us make the most of it!

This is a self-regulation intervention!

#Science: Today we ask whether childhood self-regulation has an impact on childhood development and whether we can do anything about it?

Award-winning scientist, Professor Sarah-Jane Blackmore is an expert at bridging the gap between early cognitive development and education. She has a wealth of research under her belt – some which hit tabloids late last year claiming GCSEs are damaging to the teenage brain. Much of her research has direct implications for governmental policy regarding education; including her in-depth investigation into the impact of self-regulation in childhood development.

So, what is self-regulation? Self-regulation is one’s ability to control our emotions, stop ourselves acting inappropriately and our ability to carry out self-directed learning such as studying. We continually learn and develop this skill all the way into adolescence which is why, unlike toddlers, (most) adults can stop themselves having a massive tantrum if they don’t get their way.

Most of the time, we as adults think nothing of this ability but it requires an extensively complex network of cognitive ability and brain structures that all us to control ourselves and emotions. Not only this but the ability to self-regulate, particularly in childhood, plays a foundational role in the development and maintenance of life long physical health and well-being. This is obvious for some behaviors, for example, we need to learn how to self-regulate our cravings for chocolate and other sugary treats otherwise we run the risk of developing severe health problems from overindulging.

Picking this apart in more detail, research indicates how greater social regulation as a child is associated with a range of positive attributes including school readiness, academic achievement, and good mental good. Whereas a poor ability to self-regulate as a child has demonstrated to be linked to adverse outcomes such as poor health, psychiatric disorder, substance dependence, crime, and unemployment.

Considering this, it is no wonder why there has been a chunk of research attempting to develop interventions in childhood and adolescence that improve self-regulation with the ultimate aim of improving life-long outcomes. These interventions have shown promising results, but due to differing methods of intervention, it is unclear as to which intervention works the best.

Cue, Professor Blakemore’s research!

Similar to the research technique Dr. Stuart Riche took as described in our recent blog post “We don’t need no education! Do we?”, Professor Blakemore and her colleagues had a mammoth task to undertake, sifting through 14,369 studies looking or developing self-regulating interventions over the past four decades.

From her findings, five distinct types of interventions were reported to not only improve the child’s self-regulating ability but also have positive outcomes in other areas of the child’s behaviour as social skills, conduct, behavioural problems. These interventions ranged from the more common school-based intervention to Mindfulness/Yoga interventions to physical activity to (most relevant to parents) family-based interventions involving parent training and after-school programs with siblings.

So how can you help your child develop their ability to self-regulate? For starters, don’t expect too much at once. Most of the studies Professor Blakemore looked at involved children in primary school and older. The ability to self-regulate continues to develop all the way into a person’s teens. It is completely normal for a child to have a meltdown, and it is these situations that allow the practice to perfect the ability to self-regulate. Although it is easier said than done, try not to completely avoid such situations that might cause your child to become frustrated. Children need to be exposed to such situations to be given the opportunity to practice and while they are practicing, they need to be given a key framework for how to regulate their behaviour and a supportive environment that encourages such behaviour, a technique clinician call scaffolding. Check out this article with tips for helping children to self-regulate.