Research reportEarly cognitive and language skills are linked to resting frontal gamma power across the first 3 years
Section snippets
Introduction and literature review
Cortical activity in the gamma frequency range (∼30–80 Hz) has been linked in humans and animals to a wide variety of higher cognitive processes including attention [1], [26], [36], [38], perception [1], [21], [30], [38], [39] memory [1], [16], [18], [21], [31] and language [13], [35]. It has been hypothesized that correlations between the occurrence of higher activity in the gamma frequency range and cognitive performance (as observed in human subjects using EEG and MEG recordings) reflects
Materials and methods
The studies described here have been reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of our University and have therefore been performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki. Informed consent was obtained from all parents prior to their child’s inclusion in the reported studies.
Gamma power differences according to family history
Inspection of individual power density plots, representing scalp distributions of power in 9 bins from 5 to 50 Hz for each child (i.e. 5–10, 11–15, 16–20, 21–25, 26–30, 31–35, 36–40, 41–45, and 46–50 Hz), labelled by group after the data processing described, revealed significant variability among subjects in both FH+ and FH− groups, specifically over frontal and prefrontal areas. Power density appeared to be lower for a subset of these children, primarily over frontal regions, beginning at about
Discussion
In summary, resting EEG gamma power was shown to be strongly associated with concurrent language and cognitive skills for all children. Significant correlations with behavior were observed over frontal and prefrontal areas at ages 16, 24 and 36 months. Further, differences between the FH+ cohort and the FH− controls groups in mean gamma power were apparent, with significantly lower mean power density across all ages in the FH+ group.
Recurrent thalamocortical and corticothalamic activity is
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by grants from NICHD (RO1-HD29419) to AAB, NSF #SBE-0542013 to the “Temporal Dynamics Of Learning Center”, by a Rutgers University Board of Trustees Excellence in Research Award to AAB, with additional funding from the Elizabeth H. Solomon Center for Neurodevelopmental Research.
Contributions: A.A.B conceived and designed research; A.A.B. and N.C. performed research and data collection; Z.G. analyzed data; K.D.H performed confirmatory analyses. The paper was written
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