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Cortical Source Analysis of High-Density EEG Recordings in Children
Published on: June 30, 2014
Brain correlates of negative visuospatial priming in healthy children
Christopher I Wright1, Katherine McMullin, Brian Martis
1Martinos Imaging Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, 13th St., Bldg 149, CNY-2, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA. ciwright@partners.org
Insights
This study reveals that the prefrontal cortex is key for inhibitory control in healthy children. Negative visuospatial priming, a measure of inhibition, highlights these prefrontal brain mechanisms.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Inhibitory mechanisms are crucial for goal-directed behaviors and develop in childhood.
- Deficits in inhibition are implicated in childhood neuropsychiatric disorders like Tourette syndrome, OCD, and ADHD.
- Negative visuospatial priming is a known probe for inhibition, but its neural correlates are not well understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the brain mechanisms underlying inhibitory control in healthy children using negative visuospatial priming.
- To delineate the neural correlates of negative visuospatial priming in a pediatric population.
- To establish the utility of this paradigm for studying disorders of inhibition.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a visuospatial priming paradigm.
- Employed event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in healthy children.
- Compared brain activity during a neutral control task versus an inhibitory (negative priming) task.
Main Results:
- A network of sensorimotor regions was activated during the neutral control task.
- Selective engagement of prefrontal cortex regions was observed during the negative priming (inhibitory) task.
- Negative visuospatial priming shares neural correlates with other inhibitory tasks.
Conclusions:
- The prefrontal cortex plays a significant role in inhibitory processing in healthy children.
- Negative visuospatial priming effectively engages brain regions associated with inhibition.
- This visuospatial priming task combined with fMRI can be a valuable tool for researching childhood neuropsychiatric disorders with inhibitory deficits.
Abstract:
Inhibitory mechanisms that begin to develop in childhood are essential for efficient and goal-directed behaviors. These inhibitory mechanisms may go awry in several childhood-onset neuropsychiatric disorders, such as Tourette syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Negative visuospatial priming is a well-established behavioral probe of inhibition that has been used to demonstrate deficits in children with neuropsychiatric disorders of inhibition, but the brain correlates of negative visuospatial priming have not previously been well delineated. In the present study, we use a visuospatial priming paradigm and event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to probe inhibitory brain mechanisms in healthy children. When subjects performed the control (i.e. neutral) motor task, a network of cortical and subcortical sensorimotor regions was activated. In contrast, during performance of the negative priming (i.e. inhibitory) task, several regions of the prefrontal cortex were selectively engaged. These results support the notion that the prefrontal cortex is involved in inhibitory processing in healthy children and demonstrate that negative visuospatial priming shares brain correlates with other inhibitory tasks. In conjunction with fMRI, the visuospatial priming task described in the current study may be useful for studying the pathophysiology of childhood-onset neuropsychiatric disorders characterized by deficient inhibitory processing.
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