Investigating emerging self-awareness : its neural underpinnings, the significance of self-recognition, and the relationship with social interactions

Up until now, self-recognition in the mirror, achieved at around 18 months, has been used to assess self-awareness in infancy. Even though the significance of this test is not universally accepted, this field has progressed very little over the last decades, in contrast to a broad volume of literature on the self in adults. However, a relationship between self-other differentiation and social cognitive abilities has been recently hypothesized, renewing the interest in mechanisms underlying emerging self-awareness. Adult studies have highlighted that brain networks, instead of isolated brain areas, support self-processing. Therefore, the first two studies of this thesis validated the use of advanced connectivity analyses on infant fNIRS data. Making use of these methods, one study demonstrated that functional connectivity between regions belonging to a network that has been related to abstract self-processing in adults gradually increases over the first two years of life. The same network was found to characterise infants who recognise themselves in the mirror. In another study, crucial regions of this network were shown to be engaged during self-recognition in 18-month-olds. As social interactions have been suggested to be fundamental for the construction of the self, the last two studies of this thesis investigated the relationship between emerging self-awareness and social interactions. To test this, I focused on mimicry, known to play an important role in affiliation and in mediating relationships. One study demonstrated that emerging selfawareness may affect infants’ tendency to selectively mimic in-group members, which may indicate a possible role of self-comparison and identification processes. The last study did not find evidence for a relationship between mothers’ tendency to imitate their infants at 4 months and emerging selfawareness. Taken together, these studies enrich our understanding of the mechanisms underlying emerging self-awareness and they represent a pioneering starting point for further investigations into this topic

Investigating emerging self-awareness : its neural underpinnings, the significance of self-recognition, and the relationship with social interactions

Up until now, self-recognition in the mirror, achieved at around 18 months, has been used to assess self-awareness in infancy. Even though the significance of this test is not universally accepted, this field has progressed very little over the last decades, in contrast to a broad volume of literature on the self in adults. However, a relationship between self-other differentiation and social cognitive abilities has been recently hypothesized, renewing the interest in mechanisms underlying emerging self-awareness. Adult studies have highlighted that brain networks, instead of isolated brain areas, support self-processing. Therefore, the first two studies of this thesis validated the use of advanced connectivity analyses on infant fNIRS data. Making use of these methods, one study demonstrated that functional connectivity between regions belonging to a network that has been related to abstract self-processing in adults gradually increases over the first two years of life. The same network was found to characterise infants who recognise themselves in the mirror. In another study, crucial regions of this network were shown to be engaged during self-recognition in 18-month-olds. As social interactions have been suggested to be fundamental for the construction of the self, the last two studies of this thesis investigated the relationship between emerging self-awareness and social interactions. To test this, I focused on mimicry, known to play an important role in affiliation and in mediating relationships. One study demonstrated that emerging selfawareness may affect infants’ tendency to selectively mimic in-group members, which may indicate a possible role of self-comparison and identification processes. The last study did not find evidence for a relationship between mothers’ tendency to imitate their infants at 4 months and emerging selfawareness. Taken together, these studies enrich our understanding of the mechanisms underlying emerging self-awareness and they represent a pioneering starting point for further investigations into this topic

Dynamic causal modelling on infant fNIRS data: A validation study on a simultaneously recorded fNIRS-fMRI dataset

Tracking the connectivity of the developing brain from infancy through childhood is an area of increasing research interest, and fNIRS provides an ideal method for studying the infant brain as it is compact, safe and robust to motion. However, data analysis methods for fNIRS are still underdeveloped compared to those available for fMRI. Dynamic causal modelling (DCM) is an advanced connectivity technique developed for fMRI data, that aims to estimate the coupling between brain regions and how this might be modulated by changes in experimental conditions. DCM has recently been applied to adult fNIRS, but not to infants. The present paper provides a proof-of-principle for the application of this method to infant fNIRS data and a demonstration of the robustness of this method using a simultaneously recorded fMRI-fNIRS single case study, thereby allowing the use of this technique in future infant studies. fMRI and fNIRS were simultaneously recorded from a 6-month-old sleeping infant, who was presented with auditory stimuli in a block design. Both fMRI and fNIRS data were preprocessed using SPM, and analysed using a general linear model approach. The main challenges that adapting DCM for fNIRS infant data posed included: (i) the import of the structural image of the participant for spatial pre-processing, (ii) the spatial registration of the optodes on the structural image of the infant, (iii) calculation of an accurate 3-layer segmentation of the structural image, (iv) creation of a high-density mesh as well as (v) the estimation of the NIRS optical sensitivity functions. To assess our results, we compared the values obtained for variational Free Energy (F), Bayesian Model Selection (BMS) and Bayesian Model Average (BMA) with the same set of possible models applied to both the fMRI and fNIRS datasets. We found high correspondence in F, BMS, and BMA between fMRI and fNIRS data, therefore showing for the first time high reliability of DCM applied to infant fNIRS data. This work opens new avenues for future research on effective connectivity in infancy by contributing a data analysis pipeline and guidance for applying DCM to infant fNIRS data. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Fronto-temporoparietal connectivity and self-awareness in 18-month-olds: a resting state fNIRS study

How and when a concept of the 'self' emerges has been the topic of much interest in developmental psychology. Self-awareness has been proposed to emerge at around 18 months, when toddlers start to show evidence of physical self-recognition. However, to what extent physical self-recognition is a valid indicator of being able to think about oneself, is debated. Research in adult cognitive neuroscience has suggested that a common network of brain regions called Default Mode Network (DMN), including the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), is recruited when we are reflecting on the self. We hypothesized that if mirror self-recognition involves self-awareness, toddlers who exhibit mirror self-recognition might show increased functional connectivity between frontal and temporoparietal regions of the brain, relative to those toddlers who do not yet show mirror self-recognition. Using fNIRS, we collected resting-state data from 18 Recognizers and 22 Non-Recognizers at 18 months of age. We found significantly stronger fronto-temporoparietal connectivity in Recognizers compared to Non-Recognizers, a finding which might support the hypothesized relationship between mirror-self recognition and self-awareness in infancy. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Opportunities and Limitations of Mobile Neuroimaging Technologies in Educational Neuroscience.

Funder: European Association for Research on Learning and InstructionFunder: Jacobs Foundation; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100003986As the field of educational neuroscience continues to grow, questions have emerged regarding the ecological validity and applicability of this research to educational practice. Recent advances in mobile neuroimaging technologies have made it possible to conduct neuroscientific studies directly in naturalistic learning environments. We propose that embedding mobile neuroimaging research in a cycle (Matusz, Dikker, Huth, & Perrodin, 2019), involving lab-based, seminaturalistic, and fully naturalistic experiments, is well suited for addressing educational questions. With this review, we take a cautious approach, by discussing the valuable insights that can be gained from mobile neuroimaging technology, including electroencephalography and functional near-infrared spectroscopy, as well as the challenges posed by bringing neuroscientific methods into the classroom. Research paradigms used alongside mobile neuroimaging technology vary considerably. To illustrate this point, studies are discussed with increasingly naturalistic designs. We conclude with several ethical considerations that should be taken into account in this unique area of research

Recommendations for motion correction of infant fNIRS data applicable to data sets acquired with a variety of experimental designs and acquisition systems

Despite motion artifacts are a major source of noise in fNIRS infant data, how to approach motion correction in this population has only recently started to be investigated. Homer2 offers a wide range of motion correction methods and previous work on simulated and adult data suggested the use of Spline interpolation and Wavelet filtering as optimal methods for the recovery of trials affected by motion. However, motion artifacts in infant data differ from those in adults' both in amplitude and frequency of occurrence. Therefore, artifact correction recommendations derived from adult data might not be the optimal for infant data. We hypothesized that the combined use of Spline and Wavelet would outperform their individual use on data with complex profiles of motion artifacts. To demonstrate this, we first compared, on infant semi-simulated data, the performance of several motion correction techniques on their own and of the novel combined approach; then, we investigated the performance of Spline and Wavelet alone and in combination on real cognitive data from three datasets collected with infants of different ages (5, 7 and 10 months), with different tasks (auditory/visual and tactile) and with different NIRS systems. To quantitatively estimate and compare the efficacy of these techniques, we adopted four metrics: hemodynamic response recovery error, within-subject standard deviation, between-subjects standard deviation and number of trials that survived each correction method. Our results demonstrated that (i) it is always better correcting for motion artifacts than rejecting the corrupted trials; (ii) Wavelet filtering on its own and in combination with Spline interpolation seems to be the most effective approach in reducing the between- and the within-subject standard deviations. Importantly, the combination of Spline and Wavelet was the approach providing the best performance in semi-simulation both at low and high levels of noise, also recovering most of the trials affected by motion artifacts across all datasets, a crucial result when working with infant data. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier Inc.

The CC-NB-LRR-Type Rdg2a Resistance Gene Confers Immunity to the Seed-Borne Barley Leaf Stripe Pathogen in the Absence of Hypersensitive Cell Death

BACKGROUND: Leaf stripe disease on barley (Hordeum vulgare) is caused by the seed-transmitted hemi-biotrophic fungus Pyrenophora graminea. Race-specific resistance to leaf stripe is controlled by two known Rdg (Resistance to Drechslera graminea) genes: the H. spontaneum-derived Rdg1a and Rdg2a, identified in H. vulgare. The aim of the present work was to isolate the Rdg2a leaf stripe resistance gene, to characterize the Rdg2a locus organization and evolution and to elucidate the histological bases of Rdg2a-based leaf stripe resistance. PRINCIPLE FINDINGS: We describe here the positional cloning and functional characterization of the leaf stripe resistance gene Rdg2a. At the Rdg2a locus, three sequence-related coiled-coil, nucleotide-binding site, and leucine-rich repeat (CC-NB-LRR) encoding genes were identified. Sequence comparisons suggested that paralogs of this resistance locus evolved through recent gene duplication, and were subjected to frequent sequence exchange. Transformation of the leaf stripe susceptible cv. Golden Promise with two Rdg2a-candidates under the control of their native 5′ regulatory sequences identified a member of the CC-NB-LRR gene family that conferred resistance against the Dg2 leaf stripe isolate, against which the Rdg2a-gene is effective. Histological analysis demonstrated that Rdg2a-mediated leaf stripe resistance involves autofluorescing cells and prevents pathogen colonization in the embryos without any detectable hypersensitive cell death response, supporting a cell wall reinforcement-based resistance mechanism. CONCLUSIONS: This work reports about the cloning of a resistance gene effective against a seed borne disease. We observed that Rdg2a was subjected to diversifying selection which is consistent with a model in which the R gene co-evolves with a pathogen effector(s) gene. We propose that inducible responses giving rise to physical and chemical barriers to infection in the cell walls and intercellular spaces of the barley embryo tissues represent mechanisms by which the CC-NB-LRR-encoding Rdg2a gene mediates resistance to leaf stripe in the absence of hypersensitive cell death.Davide Bulgarelli, Chiara Biselli, Nicholas C. Collins, Gabriella Consonni, Antonio M. Stanca, Paul Schulze-Lefert and Giampiero Val

Observing third-party ostracism enhances facial mimicry in 30-month-olds

Mimicry is suggested to be one of the strategies via which we enhance social affiliation. Although recent studies have shown that, like adults, young children selectively mimic the facial actions of in-group over out-group members, it is unknown whether this early mimicry behavior is driven by affiliative motivations. Here we investigated the functional role of facial mimicry in early childhood by testing whether observing third-party ostracism, which has previously been shown to enhance children’s affiliative behaviors, enhances facial mimicry in 30-month-olds. Toddlers were presented with videos in which one shape was ostracized by other shapes or with control videos that did not show any ostracism. Before and after this, the toddlers observed videos of models performing facial actions (e.g., eyebrow raising, mouth opening) while we measured activation over their corresponding facial muscles using electromyography (EMG) to obtain an index of facial mimicry. We also coded the videos of the sessions for overt imitation. We found that toddlers in the ostracism condition showed greater facial mimicry at posttest than toddlers in the control condition, as indicated by both EMG and behavioral coding measures. Although the exact mechanism underlying this result needs to be investigated in future studies, this finding is consistent with social affiliation accounts of mimicry and suggests that mimicry may play a key role in maintaining affiliative bonds when toddlers perceive the risk of social exclusion

Sant Jordi 2017

Guanyadora del 1r accèssit de la modalitat de cartells del Premi Sant Jordi de la UPF 2016Estudiant de Publicitat i Relacions Públiques de la UP

Fluent Speakers of a Second Language Process Graspable Nouns Expressed in L2 Like in Their Native Language

According to embodied cognition, language processing relies on the same neural structures involved when individuals experience the content of language material. If so, processing nouns expressing a motor content presented in a second language should modulate the motor system as if presented in the mother tongue. We tested this hypothesis using a go-no go paradigm. Stimuli included English nouns and pictures depicting either graspable or non-graspable objects. Pseudo-words and scrambled images served as controls. Italian participants, fluent speakers of English as a second language, had to respond when the stimulus was sensitive and refrain from responding when it was not. As foreseen by embodiment, motor responses were selectively modulated by graspable items (images or nouns) as in a previous experiment where nouns in the same category were presented in the native language