BCCCD22

Slack: https://bcccd.slack.com/archives/C02PM6UEGER

Jessica Gemignani 1, Judit Gervain 1,2
1 Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialisation, University of Padua, Via Venezia, 8, 35131 Padua, Italy
2 Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition Center, CNRS & University of Paris, 45 rue des Saints-Pères, 75006, Paris, France

Infants’ ability to perceive repetition-based regularities plays a central role in language acquisition (Marcus et al. 1999) and its neural correlates have been investigated with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS; de la Cruz-Pavìa & Gervain 2021). However, a systematic comparison across studies of the brain areas involved is missing. In this work, we explored how the pattern of functional activations elicited by different regularities changes across studies and ages.

We examined data from 150 infants (72 M; 91 newborns, 59 six-month-olds), collected in seven fNIRS studies. Stimuli included trisyllabic auditory sequences following a repetition-based regularity (AAB/ABB, e.g. “mubaba”), and random control sequences (ABC, e.g. “mubage”). fNIRS was measured with 24 channels distributed bilaterally to sample the fronto-temporal-parietal regions. After pre-processing and block-averaging, cluster-based permutation tests (1000 iterations; Abboub et al. 2016) were performed to compare changes in oxygenated-hemoglobin concentrations between conditions and identify clusters of spatially-adjacent active channels. Active clusters were then compared across studies.

We found that newborns display a bilateral activations’ pattern in the temporo-frontal areas in response to repetition-based sequences, while no significant activation was found for control sequences. By contrast, 6-month-olds activated the temporo-frontal areas bilaterally for the repetition-based and the control sequences. Changes in functional connectivity underlying these patterns are being explored. This finding suggests that the encoding of repetition emerges early and is stable across development, involving bilateral language areas, including the inferior-frontal region, whereas the ability to encode variable syllables as a sequence emerges by 6 months and is supported by similar brain structures.

• Session 10, Thursday, 13 Jan, 20:30 - 22:00 (UTC +0)
• Session 2, Tuesday, 11 Jan, 07:00 - 08:30 (UTC +0)