Electroencephalography power and coherence changes with age and motor skill development across the first half year of life.
Ran XiaoJoanne Shida-TokeshiDouglas L VanderbiltBeth A SmithPublished in: PloS one (2018)
Existing research in infants has correlated electroencephalography (EEG) measures of power and coherence to cognitive development and to locomotor experience, but only in infants older than 5 months of age. Our goal was to explore the relationship between EEG measures of power and coherence and motor skill development in younger infants who are developing reaching skill. Twenty-one infants with typical development between 38 and 203 days of age participated. Longitudinal EEG recording sessions were recorded in monthly increments, with 3-5 sessions acquired for 19 participants and 1 session for 2 participants, resulting in 71 sessions in total. EEG variables of interest were relative power in the 6-9 Hz range and coherence between selected electrode pairs. We describe the development of the peak in relative power in the 6-9 Hz frequency band of EEG; it is not present around 1 month of age and starts to appear across the following months. Coherence generally increased in the bilateral frontal-parietal networks, while the interhemispheric connectivity in motor cortices generally decreased. The results of this relatively small pilot study provide a foundational description of neural function changes observed as motor skills are changing across the first half year of life. This is a first step in understanding experience-dependent plasticity of the infant brain and has the potential to aid in the early detection of atypical brain development.