Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience最新文献

{"title":"Neural network topology in children’s deceptive behaviors: The role of cognitive control and reward processing","authors":"Liwen Yu ,&nbsp;Meng Dai ,&nbsp;Pei Huang ,&nbsp;Birit F.P. Broekman ,&nbsp;Michael Meaney ,&nbsp;Yap Seng Chong ,&nbsp;Marielle Valerie Fortier ,&nbsp;Peipei Setoh ,&nbsp;Henning Tiemeier ,&nbsp;Ai Peng Tan ,&nbsp;Xiao Pan Ding","doi":"10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101613","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101613","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The neural mechanisms related to children’s deceptive behaviors remain relatively unexplored. This study aims to address this gap by using measures of functional brain network topology, focusing on the cognitive control and reward processing networks that are closely related to children’s deceptive behaviors. The study included 113 6-year-old children from the Growing Up in Singapore Towards Healthy Outcomes (GUSTO) project, a birth cohort study. Children participated in the Dart Game designed to assess their tendencies to cheat and lie. During the game, children were required to throw the ball at a long-distance dartboard without supervision, which provided opportunities to cheat by breaking the rules. After the game, children were questioned about whether they had followed the rule, which provided them with opportunities to lie. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) data were collected from all children at the same age during a different visit. We compared three network topology measures (cognitive control network recruitment, reward processing network recruitment and reward-control network integration) between non-cheaters and cheaters, as well as between non-liars and liars. The results showed that a higher degree of cognitive control network recruitment was associated with a greater likelihood of lying. Moreover, a higher degree of reward-cognitive control network integration was associated with a lower likelihood of cheating and lying. The degree of reward processing network recruitment was not associated with deceptive behaviors. These findings help to elucidate how neural mechanisms of cognitive control and reward processing contribute to deceptive behaviors in young children.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49083,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"76 ","pages":"Article 101613"},"PeriodicalIF":4.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145060756","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Age-related patterns of resting EEG power in infancy: Associations with prenatal socioeconomic disadvantage","authors":"Aislinn Sandre ,&nbsp;Sonya V. Troller-Renfree ,&nbsp;Melina Amarante ,&nbsp;Amanda M. Dettmer ,&nbsp;Jerrold S. Meyer ,&nbsp;Kimberly G. Noble","doi":"10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101611","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101611","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The brain develops rapidly during the prenatal period and first two years of life, making it particularly sensitive to environmental influences. Family socioeconomic disadvantage is one environmental factor that may shape the development of brain function in infancy. However, it is unclear how brain function changes across infancy or whether prenatal family socioeconomic disadvantage is associated with age-related differences in brain function during this period. Here, we examine whether resting electroencephalography (EEG) power (theta, alpha, beta, and gamma) shows linear and/or non-linear age-related patterns across four assessments from 1 to 18 months of age (N = 165), and whether these patterns are moderated by prenatal family socioeconomic disadvantage. We find that lower-frequency (relative theta) and higher-frequency (relative alpha, beta, and gamma) power show non-linear age-related patterns during the first 18 months of life. Prenatal family socioeconomic disadvantage moderates these patterns, such that infants from lower-income families show less steep age-related decreases in lower-frequency (relative theta) power and less steep increases in higher-frequency (relative beta) power. These associations hold when adjusting for other prenatal and postnatal experiences, as well as infant demographic and health-related factors. These data suggest that lower prenatal family income is associated with age-related differences in brain function during infancy.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49083,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"76 ","pages":"Article 101611"},"PeriodicalIF":4.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145050407","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Differential microstructural development within sensorimotor cortical regions: A diffusion MRI study in preterm and full-term infants","authors":"Alexandra Brandstaetter ,&nbsp;Andrea Gondová ,&nbsp;Laurie Devisscher ,&nbsp;Denis Rivière ,&nbsp;Guillaume Auzias ,&nbsp;Yann Leprince ,&nbsp;Jessica Dubois","doi":"10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101610","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101610","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The sensorimotor system develops early in utero and supports the emergence of body representations critical for perception, action, and interaction with environment. While somatotopic protomaps are already developed in the primary somatosensory and motor cortices in late pregnancy, little is known about the anatomical substrates of this functional specialization. In this study, we aimed to decipher the microstructural properties of these regions in the developing brain. Using advanced diffusion MRI and post-processing tools, we parcellated the pre- and post-central gyri into microstructurally distinct clusters along the lateral-to-medial axis in 25 full-term neonates, confirming the early differentiation within sensorimotor regions. These clusters were further analyzed in 59 preterm infants scanned at term-equivalent age (TEA, PT_TEA), of which 45 were also scanned near birth (PT_Birth), and compared with another group of 59 full-term neonates. Applying a multivariate Mahalanobis distance approach, we quantified deviations in preterm cortical microstructure relative to the full-term reference. Preterm infants showed significant region- and position-specific deviations at both ages, though these were smaller at TEA (repeated-measures ANCOVA: PT_Birth: region effect F=25.48, position effect F=16.06; PT_TEA: region effect F=14.87, all p &lt; 0.001), consistently with ongoing maturation during the pre-term period. Differences between the pre- and post-central gyri, and along the somatotopic axis, suggested differential vulnerability to prematurity. In particular, compared with somatosensory regions, the motor regions appeared to be at a more advanced stage of maturation close to birth (paired t-test, T = -4.388, p &lt; 0.001) and less vulnerable at TEA (paired t-test, T = -4.169, p &lt; 0.001), suggesting lesser impact of prematurity. An opposite pattern was observed, particularly close to birth, for lateral positions related to mouth representation compared with intermediary (paired t-test: T = 5.933, p &lt; 0.001) and medial (paired t-test: T = 4.712, p &lt; 0.001) positions. These findings support the notion that early sensorimotor cortical specialization is microstructurally emergent during gestation and sensitive to atypical developmental context of preterm birth.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49083,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101610"},"PeriodicalIF":4.9,"publicationDate":"2025-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144988704","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Electrophysiological activity predicts children's reading ability through orthographic awareness: Evidence from a cross-sectional and longitudinal study","authors":"Man Zhang ,&nbsp;Zeping Liu ,&nbsp;Xuedi Liu ,&nbsp;Pengfei Lu ,&nbsp;Li Liu ,&nbsp;Taomei Guo","doi":"10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101609","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101609","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The relationship between brain activity and reading acquisition has been a research focus in recent years. In the current cross-sectional and longitudinal study, we aimed to investigate whether and how resting-state (rs) and task-state brain electrophysiological activity would predict children’s reading ability. Here, we tracked 73 primary school children’ orthographic awareness, reading ability, and EEG signals during both rest and completed a Chinese character recognition task over two consecutive years. Our analyses reveled these neurophysiological measures (rs-EEG power in theta/delta bands and N170 amplitude) significantly predicted orthographic awareness in both cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. Mediation analysis revealed that these neurophysiological measures influenced reading ability by affecting children's orthographic awareness. Importantly, age moderated these effects: the predictive effect of rs-EEG power was stronger in younger children and decreased with age, whereas the effect of N170 amplitude showed the opposite pattern, becoming more prominent as age increased. Collectively, these findings indicate that children's reading performance is shaped by age-sensitive brain neurophysiological activity, with orthographic processing potentially serving as a key cognitive mechanism.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49083,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101609"},"PeriodicalIF":4.9,"publicationDate":"2025-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144931696","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Feeling left out in the Lunchroom: Neural mechanisms of ostracism vary across adolescence","authors":"Cailee M. Nelson ,&nbsp;Rebecca Revilla ,&nbsp;Nicole R. Friedman ,&nbsp;Mengya Xia ,&nbsp;Caitlin M. Hudac","doi":"10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101607","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101607","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Ostracism (i.e., being ignored/excluded) can cause intense emotional reactions that detrimentally impact mental and physical health. Adolescents may be particularly susceptible to these negative consequences due to brain maturation and changing social priorities. To better understand how neural mechanisms of ostracism vary across development (i.e., age, puberty), the current study employed a pictorial adaptation of Hudac’s (2019) Lunchroom electroencephalography (EEG) task in a sample of 84 adolescents (aged 10–14 years). Results indicated unique effects across event-related potential amplitudes, including a reversed pattern (greater sensitivity to inclusion) for the P1, the “classic” ostracism effect (greater sensitivity to exclusion) for the N2, and classic effects when modulated by puberty for the P3. Source estimation identified different neural networks that were likely driving sensitivity to exclusion (e.g., amygdala, SCG, and IFG) or inclusion (e.g., ACC, cingulate, fusiform, insula, SPL, STG). Further, sensitivity to exclusion increased over pubertal development for P3 amplitude but over age for amygdala and IFG. Sensitivity to inclusion decreased over age for P1 amplitude and inclusion sensitive regions. The current study emphasizes the utility of using paradigms that isolate neural processes associated with ostracism while controlling for participant involvement.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49083,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101607"},"PeriodicalIF":4.9,"publicationDate":"2025-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144917888","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sex-specific relationships between gray matter volume and executive function in young children with and without prenatal alcohol exposure","authors":"Madison Long ,&nbsp;Preeti Kar ,&nbsp;Nils D. Forkert ,&nbsp;Bennett A. Landman ,&nbsp;Gerald F. Giesbrecht ,&nbsp;Deborah Dewey ,&nbsp;W. Ben Gibbard ,&nbsp;Christina Tortorelli ,&nbsp;Carly A. McMorris ,&nbsp;Yuankai Huo ,&nbsp;Catherine Lebel","doi":"10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101608","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101608","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Sex differences in brain volume are well established across ages however, limited research has investigated if sex differences in brain structure associate with early cognitive outcomes. Moreover, associations among sex, brain structure, and cognition in individuals with prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE), the most common known cause of developmental delay in North America, are unclear. Here, we investigated associations between executive function (measured by the BRIEF or BRIEF-P Global Executive Composite (GEC) and the Statue subtest of the NEPSY-II) and volumes of 36 gray matter regions in a longitudinal MRI sample of 169 young children (N_PAE=37; 534 total scans) aged 2–8 years. We found significant three-way interactions between sex, alcohol exposure, and executive function in 22 regions for GEC and 6 regions for Statue. Unexposed males showed negative executive function-volume associations, whereas males with PAE showed opposite associations. Unexposed females showed strong positive executive function-volume associations whereas females with PAE showed weak positive associations. We also evaluated reduced models in regions without significant 3-way interactions and found significant two-way interactions of sex and executive function for the GEC in three regions, and for the Statue in 22 regions. Males showed a negative executive function-volume relationship whereas females showed a positive relationship, regardless of exposure status. Our results suggest that males with PAE and unexposed females show relatively more mature volume-executive function relationships than females with PAE and unexposed males. This study highlights the importance of considering sex in investigations of brain and cognition, especially in populations with PAE.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49083,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101608"},"PeriodicalIF":4.9,"publicationDate":"2025-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144988705","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Safety learning during adolescence facilitates fear regulation in adult mice","authors":"Heidi C. Meyer","doi":"10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101606","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101606","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Experiences during sensitive early life developmental periods such as adolescence have a profound influence on brain maturation and long-term affective behavior. While substantial work focuses on early life adversity, emerging evidence suggests that positive affective experiences can also shape trajectories of neurobehavioral development. This study examined how experience with fear conditioning or discriminative conditioning (i.e., safety learning) during either adolescence or adulthood in male and female mice influenced fear behavior and engagement with an anxiogenic environment one month later, when adolescents had aged to adulthood. Prior conditioning (both fear and safety training) at either age, regardless of valence, promoted later fear generalization to a novel cue. In contrast, safety learning during adolescence conferred enduring benefits, leading to reduced fear expression and enhanced extinction memory in adulthood, whereas similar training in adulthood offered limited protective effects. Behavior in the elevated plus maze revealed increased movement in all previously conditioned animals (both Fear-trained and Safety-trained groups), with safety learning decreasing initial freezing in the maze and accelerating initial re-location from the placement arm. Sex differences in this study were modest, showing limited interaction with age and minimal impact on training-related outcomes across experimental phases, suggesting that the effects of conditioning on later affective regulation are robust and broadly conserved across sexes. Overall, these findings highlight adolescence as a sensitive period during which safety learning can shape affective regulation and potentially buffer against later life pathological fear responding. This work offers insight into developmental mechanisms that may inform early interventions for psychiatric conditions like anxiety.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49083,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101606"},"PeriodicalIF":4.9,"publicationDate":"2025-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144892068","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mapping early corpus callosum development to identify neurodevelopmental risk","authors":"Boyang Mao ,&nbsp;Hongxi Zhang ,&nbsp;Haitao Wang ,&nbsp;Zhi Yang","doi":"10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101605","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101605","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigated early childhood corpus callosum development, a critical process for cognitive maturation and implicated in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), using sex-specific growth curve models. Structural MRI data from 295 typically developing children (TDC; aged 1–6 years) were used to model age- and sex-dependent changes in ten morphometric parameters, including subregion volumes and midsagittal plane features. Analyses revealed nonlinear developmental trajectories, region-specific growth rates, and earlier developmental peaks in females. We applied these normative models to an independent dataset of 41 TDC and 26 children with ASD, acquired on a different scanner. Classifiers trained on deviations from the growth curves accurately distinguished children with ASD from TDC (mean Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve [AUC] = 0.95), demonstrating model generalizability. These findings establish sex-specific corpus callosum growth curve models as a quantitative, generalizable tool for characterizing typical development and detecting atypical morphometry, offering a promising approach for early, objective ASD diagnosis and potentially facilitating timely intervention. Further study of model generalizability across more diverse populations is warranted.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49083,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101605"},"PeriodicalIF":4.9,"publicationDate":"2025-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144880281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Electrophysiological decoding captures the temporal trajectory of face categorization in infants","authors":"Roman Kessler,&nbsp;Michael A. Skeide","doi":"10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101601","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101601","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The adult human brain rapidly distinguishes between faces at around 170 ms after stimulus onset. During early brain development, however, face discrimination is thought to require almost twice as much processing time. To re-examine this long-standing assumption, we presented human and nonhuman primate faces to five to thirteen-month-old infants in an event-related electroencephalography experiment. Using time-resolved decoding based on logistic regression we detected above-chance discrimination of human faces from nonhuman faces in a time window already starting at around 200 ms, originating from occipito-temporal electrodes. There was no evidence, however, for above-chance discrimination of individual human or individual nonhuman faces. These results indicate that rapid face categorization emerges already in preverbal infants.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49083,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101601"},"PeriodicalIF":4.9,"publicationDate":"2025-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144830584","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Developmental differences in social information use under uncertainty: A neurocomputational approach","authors":"Lieke Hofmans ,&nbsp;Wouter van den Bos","doi":"10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101604","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101604","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Adolescence is a period of social re-orientation, with studies suggesting that adolescents may be more sensitive to peer influence than other age groups. A clearer understanding of the dynamics and development of peer influence during adolescence is therefore particularly pertinent. In this study, we compared the cognitive and neural processes underlying social learning in adolescents (12–18 years) and adults (22–45 years), focusing on how uncertainty influences social information use. Participants completed a perceptual decision-making task in which they could revise their initial estimate after viewing a peer's estimate. Uncertainty was manipulated by varying the amount of information provided before their decision and by manipulating the peer's reported confidence. Using a combination of model-free analyses and a Bayesian computational model, we found that while adolescents and adults exhibit similar core decision-making mechanisms, computational modeling revealed that adolescents were less sensitive to variations in their own certainty and peer confidence, reducing the effect on social information use. Functional MRI revealed that adolescents showed a reduced neural response to peer confidence variations compared to adults, but exhibited a stronger initial neural response to variations in their own certainty. However, this heightened response was not present anymore when personal and peer information was to be combined. We discuss how these observations might be explained by ongoing neural development during adolescence, leading to reduced metacognitive abilities which hinder the effective integration of precision signals. Together, these findings deepen our understanding of how adolescents process social information under uncertainty and how this process evolves with age.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49083,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101604"},"PeriodicalIF":4.9,"publicationDate":"2025-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144830585","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}