Infant cross-modal learning

Symposium 4B: Infant Visual Perception and Beyond: Motion, Color, Object, and Face Perception, and Cross-modal Rule Learning (S4B-5

Infant cross-modal learning

Symposium 4B: Infant Visual Perception and Beyond: Motion, Color, Object, and Face Perception, and Cross-modal Rule LearningCross-modal information facilitates adult learning, but we know little about whether infants enjoy the same benefit during their first year of life when their brain development, being most prolific, is critically influenced by sensory experience. We investigate whether and how infants’ acquisition of an abstract rule is enhanced or limited by simultaneously presented audio-visual (A-V) stimuli. We habituated 8–10 month old infants with a sequential rule (i.e. AAB). Then we showed them rule-consistent (i.e. AAB) and rule-inconsistent (i.e. ABA or ABB) dis-habituating trials. Looking time differences between the two types of trials indicated infants’ successful discrimination and rule acquisition. We found A-V bimodal stimuli do not always facilitate learning—against the prediction of “intersensory redundancy hypothesis”. Instead, A-V congruency and correspondence were critical. For example, congruent emotional faces and emotional sounds, syllable-speaking faces and syllable sounds, upward moving shapes and rising pitch sounds all led to successful rule learning. But rule learning disappeared when we altered the cross-modal relevance and correspondence relationship between the A-V pair. Our studies suggested that during infancy, highlevel integration across A-V information put a prior constraint upon rule acquisition and learning. The sensory inputs for infant learning are not always the more, the better. Supported by grants from the Hong Kong Grant Research Council and the University of Hong Kong Seed Funding Programme for Basic Research to Chia-huei Tseng

Migratory and anti-fibrotic programmes define the regenerative potential of human cardiac progenitors

Heart regeneration is an unmet clinical need, hampered by limited renewal of adult cardiomyocytes and fibrotic scarring. Pluripotent stem cell-based strategies are emerging, but unravelling cellular dynamics of host-graft crosstalk remains elusive. Here, by combining lineage tracing and single-cell transcriptomics in injured non-human primate heart biomimics, we uncover the coordinated action modes of human progenitor-mediated muscle repair. Chemoattraction via CXCL12/CXCR4 directs cellular migration to injury sites. Activated fibroblast repulsion targets fibrosis by SLIT2/ROBO1 guidance in organizing cytoskeletal dynamics. Ultimately, differentiation and electromechanical integration lead to functional restoration of damaged heart muscle. In vivo transplantation into acutely and chronically injured porcine hearts illustrated CXCR4-dependent homing, de novo formation of heart muscle, scar-volume reduction and prevention of heart failure progression. Concurrent endothelial differentiation contributed to graft neovascularization. Our study demonstrates that inherent developmental programmes within cardiac progenitors are sequentially activated in disease, enabling the cells to sense and counteract acute and chronic injury. In this study, the authors report that pluripotent stem cell-derived ventricular progenitors target loss of myocardium and fibrotic scarring to promote heart regeneration, thus offering new potential therapeutic strategies for heart injury.Funding Agencies|European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union [743225, 788381, 101021043]; German Research Foundation, Transregio Research Unit 152; German Research Foundation, Transregio Research Unit 267; Swedish Research Council Distinguish Professor Grant; German Centre for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK)</p