SA’s Taung Child’s skull and brain not human-like in expansion

The Taung Child, South Africa’s premier hominin discovered 90 years ago by Wits University Professor Raymond Dart, never seizes to transform and evolve the search for our collective origins.

By subjecting the skull of the first australopith discovered to the latest technologies in the Wits University Microfocus X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) facility, researchers are now casting doubt on theories that Australopithecus africanus shows the same cranial adaptations found in modern human infants and toddlers – in effect disproving current support for the idea that this early hominin shows infant brain development in the prefrontal region similar to that of modern humans.

The results have been published online in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on Monday, 25 August 2014 at 21:00 SAST (15:00 EST), in an article titled: New high resolution CT data of the Taung partial cranium and endocast and their bearing on metopism and hominin brain evolution.

The Taung Child has historical and scientific importance in the fossil record as the first and best example of early hominin brain evolution, and theories have been put forward that it exhibits key cranial adaptations found in modern human infants and toddlers.

To test the ancientness of this evolutionary adaptation, Dr Kristian J. Carlson, Senior Researcher from the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, and colleagues, Professor Ralph L. Holloway from Columbia University and Douglas C. Broadfield from Florida Atlantic University, performed an in silico dissection of the Taung fossil using high-resolution computed tomography.

"A recent study has described the roughly 3 million-year-old fossil, thought to have belonged to a 3 to 4-year-old, as having a persistent metopic suture and open anterior fontanelle, two features that facilitate post-natal brain growth in human infants when their disappearance is delayed," said Carlson.

Comparisons with the existing hominin fossil record and chimpanzee variation do not support this evolutionary scenario.

Citing deficiencies in how the Taung fossil material has been recently assessed, the researchers suggest physical evidence does not incontrovertibly link features of the Taung skull, or its endocast, to early prefrontal lobe expansion, a brain region implicated in many human behaviors.

The authors also debate the previously offered theoretical basis for this adaptation in A. africanus. By refuting the presence of these features in the Taung Child, the researchers dispute whether these structures were selectively advantageous in hominin evolution, particularly in australopiths.

Thus, results of the new study show that there is still no evidence for this kind of skull adaptation that evolved before Homo, nor is there evidence for a link between such skull characteristics and the proposed accompanying early prefrontal lobe expansion, Carlson said.

(Image caption: In a study of brains from children with autism, neurons in brains from autistic patients did not undergo normal pruning during childhood and adolescence. The images show representative neurons from unaffected brains (left) and brains from autistic patients (right); the spines on the neurons indicate the location of synapses. Credit: Guomei Tang, PhD and Mark S. Sonders, PhD/Columbia University Medical Center)

Children with Autism Have Extra Synapses in Brain

Children and adolescents with autism have a surplus of synapses in the brain, and this excess is due to a slowdown in a normal brain “pruning” process during development, according to a study by neuroscientists at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC). Because synapses are the points where neurons connect and communicate with each other, the excessive synapses may have profound effects on how the brain functions. The study was published in the August 21 online issue of the journal Neuron.

A drug that restores normal synaptic pruning can improve autistic-like behaviors in mice, the researchers found, even when the drug is given after the behaviors have appeared.

“This is an important finding that could lead to a novel and much-needed therapeutic strategy for autism,” said Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, Lawrence C. Kolb Professor and Chair of Psychiatry at CUMC and director of New York State Psychiatric Institute, who was not involved in the study.

Although the drug, rapamycin, has side effects that may preclude its use in people with autism, “the fact that we can see changes in behavior suggests that autism may still be treatable after a child is diagnosed, if we can find a better drug,” said the study’s senior investigator, David Sulzer, PhD, professor of neurobiology in the Departments of Psychiatry, Neurology, and Pharmacology at CUMC.

During normal brain development, a burst of synapse formation occurs in infancy, particularly in the cortex, a region involved in autistic behaviors; pruning eliminates about half of these cortical synapses by late adolescence. Synapses are known to be affected by many genes linked to autism, and some researchers have hypothesized that people with autism may have more synapses.

To test this hypothesis, co-author Guomei Tang, PhD, assistant professor of neurology at CUMC, examined brains from children with autism who had died from other causes. Thirteen brains came from children ages two to 9, and thirteen brains came from children ages 13 to 20. Twenty-two brains from children without autism were also examined for comparison.

Dr. Tang measured synapse density in a small section of tissue in each brain by counting the number of tiny spines that branch from these cortical neurons; each spine connects with another neuron via a synapse.

By late childhood, she found, spine density had dropped by about half in the control brains, but by only 16 percent in the brains from autism patients.

“It’s the first time that anyone has looked for, and seen, a lack of pruning during development of children with autism,” Dr. Sulzer said, “although lower numbers of synapses in some brain areas have been detected in brains from older patients and in mice with autistic-like behaviors.”

Clues to what caused the pruning defect were also found in the patients’ brains; the autistic children’s brain cells were filled with old and damaged parts and were very deficient in a degradation pathway known as “autophagy.” Cells use autophagy (a term from the Greek for self-eating) to degrade their own components.

Using mouse models of autism, the researchers traced the pruning defect to a protein called mTOR. When mTOR is overactive, they found, brain cells lose much of their “self-eating” ability. And without this ability, the brains of the mice were pruned poorly and contained excess synapses. “While people usually think of learning as requiring formation of new synapses, “Dr. Sulzer says, “the removal of inappropriate synapses may be just as important.”

The researchers could restore normal autophagy and synaptic pruning—and reverse autistic-like behaviors in the mice—by administering rapamycin, a drug that inhibits mTOR. The drug was effective even when administered to the mice after they developed the behaviors, suggesting that such an approach may be used to treat patients even after the disorder has been diagnosed.

Because large amounts of overactive mTOR were also found in almost all of the brains of the autism patients, the same processes may occur in children with autism.

“What’s remarkable about the findings,” said Dr. Sulzer, “is that hundreds of genes have been linked to autism, but almost all of our human subjects had overactive mTOR and decreased autophagy, and all appear to have a lack of normal synaptic pruning. This says that many, perhaps the majority, of genes may converge onto this mTOR/autophagy pathway, the same way that many tributaries all lead into the Mississippi River. Overactive mTOR and reduced autophagy, by blocking normal synaptic pruning that may underlie learning appropriate behavior, may be a unifying feature of autism.”

Alan Packer, PhD, senior scientist at the Simons Foundation, which funded the research, said the study is an important step forward in understanding what’s happening in the brains of people with autism.

“The current view is that autism is heterogeneous, with potentially hundreds of genes that can contribute. That’s a very wide spectrum, so the goal now is to understand how those hundreds of genes cluster together into a smaller number of pathways; that will give us better clues to potential treatments,” he said.

“The mTOR pathway certainly looks like one of these pathways. It is possible that screening for mTOR and autophagic activity will provide a means to diagnose some features of autism, and normalizing these pathways might help to treat synaptic dysfunction and treat the disease.”

Prenatal Alcohol Exposure Alters Development of Brain Function

In the first study of its kind, Prapti Gautam, PhD, and colleagues from The Saban Research Institute of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles found that children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) showed weaker brain activation during specific cognitive tasks than their unaffected counterparts. These novel findings suggest a possible neural mechanism for the persistent attention problems seen in individuals with FASD. The results of this study will be published in Cerebral Cortex on August 4.

“Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used to observe brain activity during mental tasks in children with FASD, but we are the first to utilize these techniques to look at brain activation over time,” says Gautam. “We wanted to see if the differences in brain activation between children with FASD and their healthy peers were static, or if they changed as children got older.”

FASD encompasses the broad spectrum of symptoms that are linked to in utero alcohol exposure, including cognitive impairment, deficits in intelligence and attention and central nervous system abnormalities. These symptoms can lead to attention problems and higher societal and economic burdens common in individuals with FASD.

During the period of childhood and adolescence, brain function, working memory and attention performance all rapidly improve, suggesting that this is a crucial time for developing brain networks. To study how prenatal alcohol exposure may alter this development, researchers observed a group of unaffected children and a group of children with FASD over two years. They used fMRI to observe brain activation through mental tasks such as visuo-spatial attention—how we visually perceive the spatial relationships among objects in our environment —and working memory.

“We found that there were significant differences in development brain activation over time between the two groups, even though they did not differ in task performance,” notes Elizabeth Sowell, PhD, director of the Developmental Cognitive Neuroimaging Laboratory at The Saban Research Institute and senior author on the manuscript. “While the healthy control group showed an increase in signal intensity over time, the children with FASD showed a decrease in brain activation during visuo-spatial attention, especially in the frontal, temporal and parietal brain regions.”

These results demonstrate that prenatal alcohol exposure can change how brain signaling develops during childhood and adolescence, long after the damaging effects of alcohol exposure in utero. The atypical development of brain activation observed in children with FASD could explain the persistent problems in cognitive and behavioral function seen in this population as they mature.

Not too early for maths

Bad maths grades, poor participation in class, no interest in arithmetic. Preterm children often suffer from dyscalculia – at least according to some scientific studies. A misunderstanding, claims developmental psychologist Dr Julia Jäkel, who has been studying the performance of preterm children.

Thanks to modern medicine, the percentage of preterm survivors is constantly increasing. On the cognitive level, these children frequently have long-term problems such as poor arithmetic skills and difficulty concentrating. For a long time, research focused on high-risk children, born before 32 weeks gestational age or with less than 1,500 gram. Current studies from the most recent years, however, show that this approach is too short-sighted.

Dr Julia Jäkel from the Department of Developmental Psychology has analysed cognitive abilities of children born between 23 and 41 weeks gestation. In doing so, she covered the entire spectrum, ranging from extremely preterm to healthy term born infants. For this purpose, she used data of the Bavarian Longitudinal Study, which has been following a birth cohort from the late 80s until today. “Having access to such a comprehensive long-term study is a dream come true for every developmental psychologist,” says the Bochum researcher. Over the course of the study, all children underwent a whole battery of tests that assessed their cognitive and educational abilities, and their parents were interviewed in depth.

The RUB researcher has so far mainly focused on data collected at preschool and early school age. For different test tasks, she assessed their cognitive workload, a criterion for the complexity of a given task. The data showed that preterm children had greater difficulties with tasks that demanded higher working memory resources. Moreover, results revealed that not only high-risk children had significant difficulties. On average, the more preterm a child had been born, the poorer were his or her abilities to solve complex tasks.

But what exactly is the nature of these difficulties? It has been frequently suggested that preterm children suffer from dyscalculia. A phenomenon that Julia Jäkel examined more closely. “Mathematical deficiencies, maths learning disorder, dyscalculia, innumeracy – these terms’ definitions vary slightly,” she explains, but there are no standardised, internationally consistent diagnostic criteria. In order to assess specific maths deficiencies, children in Germany are assessed with a number of tests. If their results fall below a certain cut off value in maths while their cognitive skills (IQ) are in the normal range, they are diagnosed with “maths learning disorder” or “dyscalculia”.

“The problem with preterm children, however, is that they often have general cognitive deficits,” Julia Jäkel points out. “According to current criteria, these children can’t be diagnosed.” Together with Dieter Wolke from the University of Warwick, UK, she compared different diagnostic criteria for dyscalculia in her analysis. The aim of the study was to identify specific maths deficiencies in preterm children that were independent of general cognitive impairments. With surprising results: “There is no specific maths deficit in preterm children if their general IQ is factored in,” says the researcher.

This means that preterm children do not suffer from dyscalculia more often than term children. However, they often have maths difficulties and these may not be recognized. This is because the current criteria make it impossible to diagnose dyscalculia if a child also has general cognitive deficits. Thus, these children do not receive specific help in maths although they may be in urgent need. “We need reliable and consistent diagnostic criteria,” demands Julia Jäkel. “And we’ve got to find ways to actually deliver support in schools.”

Together with her British team, the psychologist compared the results of the Bavarian Longitudinal Study with “EPICure” data, a similar study that commenced in the UK in the 1990s, following a cohort of extremely preterm children. The researchers focus on mathematical and educational performance. British preterm children had similar cognitive and basic numerical skills as German preterm children. In terms of maths achievement, however, they showed significantly better results. “We explain this with the fact that, unlike in Germany, in the UK it has not been possible for children to delay school entry,” explains Julia Jäkel. “In addition, special schools are attended by only a small percentage of extremely disabled children. All other children are integrated into normal classes in regular schools and receive targeted support there.”

The developmental psychologist has already demonstrated that assistance at primary-school age can really make a difference. Parents who support their preterm children with sensitive scaffolding can compensate the negative cognitive effects of preterm birth. It is helpful, for example, if parents give their children appropriate feedback to homework tasks and suggest potential solutions, rather than solving the tasks for the child. However, Julia Jäkel believes that a lot of research is yet to be done as far as intervention is concerned: “A large percentage of parents is very dedicated and has resources to help their children,” she says. “But research has not yet produced anything that would ensure successful results in the long-term.” Together with colleagues from the university hospital in Essen, the RUB researcher plans to investigate the benefits of computer-aided working memory training for preterm children’s school success, which has already been successfully applied on an international level.

It would also be helpful if findings from related disciplines, such as developmental psychology, educational research, and neonatal medicine were better integrated. This is, for example, because neonatal medical treatment can significantly affect later cognitive performance. Together with her interdisciplinary team, Julia Jäkel used a comprehensive model to analyse to what extent different neonatal medical indicators affect cognitive development at age 20 months, attention abilities at age six, and maths abilities at age eight years. In her analyses, she factored in child sex and socio-economic status.

Results showed that neonatal medical variables, e.g., the duration of mechanical ventilation, predicted cognitive abilities at age 20 months. Both factors together predicted attention regulation at age six years. And all those precursors, in turn, affected long-term general maths abilities.

Subsequently, Julia Jäkel analysed the data once again from a different perspective, in order to predict specific maths skills that were independent of the child’s IQ. In that model, only two variables had direct impact: the duration of mechanical ventilation and hospitalisation after birth. In the 1980s, when children participating in the Bavarian Longitudinal Study were born, German doctors often used invasive ventilation methods. Today, less invasive methods are available, but to what extent they may affect long-term cognitive performance has not yet been investigated.

“Both too high and too low oxygen concentrations are harmful to brain development,” explains Julia Jäkel. “The neonatologist in charge is faced with the great challenge of determining the right dose for each infant, depending on individually changing situations.” This is why it is so important to integrate psychological models with neonatal intensive care research. The joint objective is to offer preterm children the chance of a successful school career, high quality of life and social participation.

(Figure 1: Axons grow and turn in response to guidance cues (arrows), which regulate endocytosis and exocytosis at the tips of growing axons. Credit: © 2014 T. Tojima et al.)

Steering the filaments of the developing brain

During brain development, nerve fibers grow and extend to form brain circuits. This growth is guided by molecular cues (Fig. 1), but exactly how these cues guide axon extension has been unclear. Takuro Tojima and colleagues from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute have now uncovered the signaling pathways responsible for turning growing nerve fibers, or axons, toward or away from guidance cues.

The researchers previously showed that axon-repelling cues act by inducing the removal of cell membrane—a process called endocytosis—from the side of the axon closest to the repulsive cue. The enzyme PIPKIγ90 is known to be involved in endocytosis in axons during certain types of synaptic activity, so the researchers investigated whether PIPKIγ90 also played a role in endocytosis during axon turning. By examining the developing brains of chicken embryos expressing an inactive form of PIPKIγ90, the researchers found that cues normally inducing endocytosis were no longer effective in repelling axon growth.

Cues that normally attract axons do so by driving membrane addition—exocytosis—on the side of the axon closest to the cue and also by suppressing endocytosis. Tojima’s team found that axons continued to be attracted to such cues even in the absence of PIPKIγ90, suggesting that PIPKIγ90 signaling is not involved in axon attraction.

The activity of PIPKIγ90 is known to be regulated by an enzyme called CDK5, a subunit of which binds to the protein kinase CaMKII. The researchers found that by inhibiting CDK5 or CaMKII, and thereby blocking the regulation of PIPKIγ90 that is needed to suppress endocytosis, endocytosis could occur in response to attractive cues.

They also found, however, that blocking CDK5 or CaMKII did not have any effect on endocytosis if the neurons expressed a mutant version of PIPKIγ90 that was unaffected by CDK5 and CaMKII signaling. As inhibitors of CDK5 or CaMKII did not alter endocytosis in response to repulsive cues, the team’s findings indicate that different signaling pathways are responsible for turning axons toward or away from guidance cues.

Additionally, Tojima and his colleagues showed that they could induce the attraction of axons toward drugs that inhibit endocytosis, suggesting that being able to control the direction of axon growth has potential therapeutic applications. “We hope our findings will aid in the development of future therapeutic strategies for rewiring neuronal networks after spinal cord injury and neurodegenerative diseases,” explains Tojima.

Measuring Nurture: Study Shows How “Good Mothering” Hardwires Infant Brain

By carefully watching nearly a hundred hours of video showing mother rats protecting, warming, and feeding their young pups, and then matching up what they saw to real-time electrical readings from the pups’ brains, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center have found that the mother’s presence and social interactions — her nurturing role — directly molds the early neural activity and growth of her offsprings’ brain.

Reporting in the July 21 edition of the journal Current Biology, the NYU Langone team showed that the mother’s presence in the nest regulated and controlled electrical signaling in the infant pup’s brain.

Although scientists have known for decades that maternal-infant bonding affects neural development, the NYU Langone team’s latest findings are believed to be the first to show — as it is happening — how such natural, early maternal attachment behaviors, including nesting, nursing, and grooming of pups, impact key stages in postnatal brain development.

Researchers say the so-called slow-wave, neural signaling patterns seen during the initial phases of mammalian brain development — between age 12 and 20 days in rats — closely resembled the electrical patterns seen in humans for meditation and conscious and unconscious sleep-wake cycles, and during highly focused attention. These early stages are when permanent neural communication pathways are known to form in the infant brain, and when increasing numbers of nerve axons become sheathed, or myelinated, to speed neural signaling.

According to senior study investigator and neurobiologist Regina Sullivan, PhD, whose previous research in animals showed how maternal interactions influenced gene activity in the infant brain, the latest study offers an even more profound perspective on maternal caregiving.

“Our research shows how in mammals the mother’s sensory stimulation helps sculpt and mold the infant’s growing brain and helps define the role played by ‘nurturing’ in healthy brain development, and offers overall greater insight into what constitutes good mothering,” says Sullivan, a professor at the NYU School of Medicine and its affiliated Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research. “The study also helps explain how differences in the way mothers nurture their young could account, in part, for the wide variation in infant behavior among animals, including people, with similar backgrounds, or in uniform, tightly knit cultures.”

“There are so many factors that go into rearing children,” says lead study investigator Emma Sarro, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow at NYU Langone. “Our findings will help scientists and clinicians better understand the whole-brain implications of quality interactions and bonding between mothers and infants so closely after birth, and how these biological attachment behaviors frame the brain’s hard wiring.”

For the study, a half-dozen rat mothers and their litters, of usually a dozen pups, were watched and videotaped from infancy for preset times during the day as they naturally developed. One pup from each litter was outfitted with a miniature wireless transmitter, invisibly placed under the skin and next to the brain to record its electrical patterns.

Specifically, study results showed that when rat mothers left their pups alone in the nest, infant cortical brain electrical activity, measured as local field potentials, jumped 50 percent to 100 percent, and brain wave patterns became more erratic, or desynchronous. Researchers point out that such periodic desynchronization is key to healthy brain growth and communication across different brain regions.

During nursing, infant rat pups calmed down after attaching themselves to their mother’s nipple. Brain activity also slowed and became more synchronous, with clearly identifiable electrical patterns.

Slow-wave infant brain activity increased by 30 percent, while readings of higher brain-wave frequencies decreased by 30 percent. Milk delivery led to intermittent bursts of electrical brain activity that were double or five times higher than before.

Similar spikes in rat brain activity of more than 100 percent were observed when mothers naturally groomed their infant pups.

However, these brain surges progressively declined during weaning, as infant pups gained independence from their mothers, leaving the nest and seeking food on their own as they grew past two weeks of age.

Additional experiments with a neural-signaling blocking agent, propranolol, confirmed that maternal effects were controlled in part by secretion of norepinephrine, a key neurotransmitter and hormone involved in most basic brain and body functions, including regulation of heart rate and cognition. Noradrenergic blocking in infant rats mostly dampened all previously observed effects induced by their mothers.

Sullivan says her team next plans similar experiments to look at how behavioral variations by the mother affect infant rat brain development, with the added goal of mapping any differences in brain development.

Long term, they say, they hope to develop diagnostic tools and therapies for people whose brains may have been impaired or simply underdeveloped during infancy.

Sarro says more research is also under way to investigate what other, nonadrenergic biological mechanisms might also be involved in controlling maternal sensory stimulation of the infant brain.

What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades

Does handwriting matter?

Not very much, according to many educators. The Common Core standards, which have been adopted in most states, call for teaching legible writing, but only in kindergarten and first grade. After that, the emphasis quickly shifts to proficiency on the keyboard.

But psychologists and neuroscientists say it is far too soon to declare handwriting a relic of the past. New evidence suggests that the links between handwriting and broader educational development run deep.

Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they also remain better able to generate ideas and retain information. In other words, it’s not just what we write that matters — but how.

Read more

Outgrowing emotional egocentricity

Children are more egocentric than adults. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig  have demonstrated for the first time that children are also worse at putting themselves in other people’s emotional shoes. According to the researchers, the supramarginal gyrus region of the brain must be sufficiently developed in children for them to be able to overcome their egocentric take on the world.

When little Philip rejoices at winning the prize in a game, it is almost impossible for him to understand that his best friend Tom, who has just lost, is not as jubilant. The opposite also applies. “Children are simply more egocentric,” says Nikolaus Steinbeis, a researcher at the Leipzig-based Max Planck Institute, summing up the general hypothesis.

Egocentrism refers to the inability to differentiate between one’s own point of view and that of other people. Egocentric people consider themselves to be the centre of all activity and assess all events and circumstances from this perspective. They project their own ideas, fears and desires onto the environment and others.

Up to now, all that the research in this area had to offer was a few theoretical ideas and studies on the development of cognitive perspective-taking. The question concerning egocentrism in connection with people’s emotional states and the development of this phenomenon over the course of childhood had been largely ignored. “We currently know very little about how emotional egocentrism is expressed in childhood and about the neuronal and cognitive processes on which this is based,” explains Steinbeis.

In order to compare the emotional states of different age groups, Steinbeis used an innovative game involving monetary rewards and punishments. “Earlier studies have shown that similarly strong emotional states can be triggered in both children and adults using such rewards and punishments. Children take as much delight as adults in monetary rewards and they are just as frustrated by losses,” he says.

During the game, two people competed against each other without, however, being able to see each other.  Equipped with a computer screen and keyboard, the test subjects were asked to demonstrate their reaction speed. The participants were informed by the screen as to whether they or their opponents could rejoice in victory or despair in defeat. They were then asked to estimate the emotions experienced by their opponents. Of principal interest was how strongly the players’ own results influenced their assessments of their opponents’ emotional state. For example, if, due to their own status as a winner, a participant assessed their counterpart as being happy, despite the fact that the latter had just lost the game, this indicated that the winner was egocentrically projecting their own state onto the opponent.

The results of the study reveal that adults found it easy to overcome this tendency, whereas children between the ages of 6 and 13 tended to be guided by their own emotions when assessing those of others. The ability to assess the emotions of our counterparts independently of our own emotional state improves with age. “In general, the older a child is, the better he or she will be able to put itself in the emotional position of another person,” says Steinbeis, explaining the study findings.

In addition, the scientists measured the activity of different regions of the brain in MRI scanners and discovered a region that plays a crucial role in our ability to overcome our own feelings. The right supramarginal gyrus is a region of the temporoparietal junction, which is generally necessary for overcoming one’s own point of view. It is strongly linked with other brain regions like the anterior insula, which is exclusively responsible for enabling us to identify with other people’s emotional states. “This means that, with the right supramarginal gyrus, we have located a region which mainly functions in enabling us to overcome our own feelings,” says Steinbeis. Moreover, the scientists established that, with increasing age, the cortical thickness of the nerve fibres in this area declines. This suggests that the nerve fibres are more active as we get older.

Emotional egocentrism plays a major role in many conflicts, as the inability to overcome egocentric thinking leads to inappropriate social behaviour.  People affected by this condition experience rejection, which has been shown to have a negative impact on health and development. Scientists would therefore like to understand the reasons for socially detrimental behaviour and develop options for targeted intervention.

A ‘hands-on’ approach could help babies develop spatial awareness

A study from the Department of Psychology published today found:

• Changes in the way the brain processes touch in the first year of life
• Babies start keeping track of their hands are when their arms move around from 8 months
• Crossing the hands confuses the mind in young babies
• The way we perceive touch in the outside world develops in the first year of life

The research, from Goldsmiths’ InfantLab, suggested that babies’ tactile experiences could be important for developing their sense of place in the world around them.

The InfantLab research team carried out their study on 66 babies aged from six to ten months old.

Babies felt harmless ‘buzzes’ on their arms

In the study, babies felt little tactile ‘buzzes’ on their hands first with their arms in an uncrossed position and then in a crossed position, while their brain activity was recorded through an EEG (electroencephalography) sensor net.

This is one of the first pieces of research to focus on the development of ‘touch perception’, which is crucial for investigating how babies learn to perceive how their own bodies fit into the world around them.

Dr Andy Bremner, InfantLab Director, explained: “We discovered that it takes time for babies to build up good mechanisms for perceiving how they fit into the outside world. Specifically, early on they do not appear to perceive the ways in which the body changes when their limbs, in this case their arms, move around.” 

Dr Silvia Rigato, researcher on the project, commented: “The vast majority of previous studies on infant perception has focussed on what babies perceive of a visual environment on a screen and out of reach, giving us a picture of what babies can do and understand when in couch potato mode.”

“Our research has taken this a step further. As adults we need good maps of where our bodies and limbs are in order to be able to act and move around competently. It seems these take time to develop in the first year, and we didn’t know that before.”

The full research paper ‘The neural basis of somatosensory remapping develops in human infancy’ was published in the journal Current Biology.