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Updated: Sep 16, 2025

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Hold on Tight! Linking Emotions and Actions in the Infant Brain

Elisa Roberti1,2, Chiara Turati1,2, Ermanno Quadrelli1,2

  • 1Psychology Department, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milano, Italy.

Infancy : the Official Journal of the International Society on Infant Studies
|July 12, 2025
PubMed

Insights

Ten-month-old infants use emotional cues to predict actions, showing heightened neural responses to happiness. This study reveals early brain mechanisms for infants processing social cues and linking emotions to subsequent behaviors.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental neuroscience
  • Infant social cognition
  • Emotional processing

Background:

  • Infants utilize social referencing to interpret events and guide behavior by the first year.
  • Understanding the neural basis of linking observed emotions to subsequent actions in infants is limited.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the electrophysiological responses of 10-month-old infants to emotional displays and subsequent actions.
  • To explore how infants link observed emotions (happiness, disgust) to object-directed actions (pushing away, pulling closer).

Main Methods:

  • A priming study using electroencephalography (EEG) on 30 infants aged 10 months.
  • Infants were presented with novel objects paired with happy or disgusted emotional displays (prime) followed by actions (target).
  • Analysis of event-related potentials (ERPs), including Nc, Pc, mu-rhythm, and theta activity.

Main Results:

  • Infants showed heightened attentional (Nc) and cognitive processing (Pc) for happy over disgusted emotional primes.
  • Pushing objects away after a happy display increased slow wave activity, suggesting an unexpected event.
  • Pulling objects closer after happiness elicited mu-rhythm desynchronization, indicating motor resonance.
  • Increased theta activity for pushing away objects indicated an unexpected event.

Conclusions:

  • By 10 months, infants process emotional cues and use them to predict subsequent actions.
  • Neural evidence demonstrates infants' ability to bridge observed emotions and actions, highlighting early social cue processing.
  • These findings reveal early neural sensitivity for complex social information processing before 12 months of age.

Keywords:
actionselectroencephalographyemotionsinfant cognitionsocial referencing

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