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Cusack R, Ranzato M, Charvet CJ. Helpless infants are learning a foundation model. Trends Cogn Sci 2024:S1364-6613(24)00114-1. [PMID: 38839537 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2024.05.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/12/2023] [Revised: 04/24/2024] [Accepted: 05/03/2024] [Indexed: 06/07/2024]
Abstract
Humans have a protracted postnatal helplessness period, typically attributed to human-specific maternal constraints causing an early birth when the brain is highly immature. By aligning neurodevelopmental events across species, however, it has been found that humans are not born with especially immature brains compared with animal species with a shorter helpless period. Consistent with this, the rapidly growing field of infant neuroimaging has found that brain connectivity and functional activation at birth share many similarities with the mature brain. Inspired by machine learning, where deep neural networks also benefit from a 'helpless period' of pre-training, we propose that human infants are learning a foundation model: a set of fundamental representations that underpin later cognition with high performance and rapid generalisation.
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Molloy MF, Saygin ZM, Osher DE. Predicting high-level visual areas in the absence of task fMRI. Sci Rep 2024; 14:11376. [PMID: 38762549 PMCID: PMC11102456 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-62098-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/03/2024] [Accepted: 05/13/2024] [Indexed: 05/20/2024] Open
Abstract
The ventral visual stream is organized into units, or functional regions of interest (fROIs), specialized for processing high-level visual categories. Task-based fMRI scans ("localizers") are typically used to identify each individual's nuanced set of fROIs. The unique landscape of an individual's functional activation may rely in large part on their specialized connectivity patterns; recent studies corroborate this by showing that connectivity can predict individual differences in neural responses. We focus on the ventral visual stream and ask: how well can an individual's resting state functional connectivity localize their fROIs for face, body, scene, and object perception? And are the neural processors for any particular visual category better predicted by connectivity than others, suggesting a tighter mechanistic relationship between connectivity and function? We found, among 18 fROIs predicted from connectivity for each subject, all but one were selective for their preferred visual category. Defining an individual's fROIs based on their connectivity patterns yielded regions that were more selective than regions identified from previous studies or atlases in nearly all cases. Overall, we found that in the absence of a domain-specific localizer task, a 10-min resting state scan can be reliably used for defining these fROIs.
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Affiliation(s)
- M Fiona Molloy
- Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, 1835 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
| | - Zeynep M Saygin
- Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, 1835 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
| | - David E Osher
- Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, 1835 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA.
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Cabral L, Calabro FJ, Foran W, Parr AC, Ojha A, Rasmussen J, Ceschin R, Panigrahy A, Luna B. Multivariate and regional age-related change in basal ganglia iron in neonates. Cereb Cortex 2024; 34:bhad456. [PMID: 38059685 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhad456] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/05/2023] [Revised: 10/31/2023] [Accepted: 11/01/2023] [Indexed: 12/08/2023] Open
Abstract
In the perinatal period, reward and cognitive systems begin trajectories, influencing later psychiatric risk. The basal ganglia is important for reward and cognitive processing but early development has not been fully characterized. To assess age-related development, we used a measure of basal ganglia physiology, specifically brain tissue iron, obtained from nT2* signal in resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI), associated with dopaminergic processing. We used data from the Developing Human Connectome Project (n = 464) to assess how moving from the prenatal to the postnatal environment affects rsfMRI nT2*, modeling gestational and postnatal age separately for basal ganglia subregions in linear models. We did not find associations with tissue iron and gestational age [range: 24.29-42.29] but found positive associations with postnatal age [range:0-17.14] in the pallidum and putamen, but not the caudate. We tested if there was an interaction between preterm birth and postnatal age, finding early preterm infants (GA < 35 wk) had higher iron levels and changed less over time. To assess multivariate change, we used support vector regression to predict age from voxel-wise-nT2* maps. We could predict postnatal but not gestational age when maps were residualized for the other age term. This provides evidence subregions differentially change with postnatal experience and preterm birth may disrupt trajectories.
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Affiliation(s)
- Laura Cabral
- Department of Radiology University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15224, United States
| | - Finnegan J Calabro
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, United States
- Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh, 15213, United States
| | - Will Foran
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, United States
| | - Ashley C Parr
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, United States
| | - Amar Ojha
- Center for Neuroscience, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, United States
- Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, United States
| | - Jerod Rasmussen
- Development, Health and Disease Research Program, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, United States
- Department of Pediatrics, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, United States
| | - Rafael Ceschin
- Department of Biomedical Informatics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15224, United States
| | - Ashok Panigrahy
- Department of Radiology University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15224, United States
| | - Beatriz Luna
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, United States
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Bayne T, Frohlich J, Cusack R, Moser J, Naci L. Consciousness in the cradle: on the emergence of infant experience. Trends Cogn Sci 2023; 27:1135-1149. [PMID: 37838614 PMCID: PMC10660191 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2023.08.018] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/25/2023] [Revised: 08/28/2023] [Accepted: 08/29/2023] [Indexed: 10/16/2023]
Abstract
Although each of us was once a baby, infant consciousness remains mysterious and there is no received view about when, and in what form, consciousness first emerges. Some theorists defend a 'late-onset' view, suggesting that consciousness requires cognitive capacities which are unlikely to be in place before the child's first birthday at the very earliest. Other theorists defend an 'early-onset' account, suggesting that consciousness is likely to be in place at birth (or shortly after) and may even arise during the third trimester. Progress in this field has been difficult, not just because of the challenges associated with procuring the relevant behavioral and neural data, but also because of uncertainty about how best to study consciousness in the absence of the capacity for verbal report or intentional behavior. This review examines both the empirical and methodological progress in this field, arguing that recent research points in favor of early-onset accounts of the emergence of consciousness.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tim Bayne
- Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia; Brain, Mind, and Consciousness Program, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Toronto, Canada.
| | - Joel Frohlich
- Institute for Neuromodulation and Neurotechnology, University Hospital and University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany; Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies, Santa Monica, CA, USA
| | - Rhodri Cusack
- Thomas Mitchell Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
| | - Julia Moser
- Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
| | - Lorina Naci
- Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience and Global Brain Health Institute, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
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Dilks DD, Jung Y, Kamps FS. The development of human cortical scene processing. CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 2023; 32:479-486. [PMID: 38283826 PMCID: PMC10815932 DOI: 10.1177/09637214231191772] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/30/2024]
Abstract
Decades of research have uncovered the neural basis of place (or "scene") processing in adulthood, revealing a set of three regions that respond selectively to visual scene information, each hypothesized to support distinct functions within scene processing (e.g., recognizing a particular kind of place versus navigating through it). Despite this considerable progress, surprisingly little is known about how these cortical regions develop. Here we review the limited evidence to date, highlighting the first few studies exploring the origins of cortical scene processing in infancy, and the several studies addressing when the scene regions reach full maturity, unfortunately with inconsistent findings. This inconsistency likely stems from common pitfalls in pediatric functional magnetic resonance imaging, and accordingly, we discuss how these pitfalls may be avoided. Furthermore, we point out that almost all studies to date have focused only on general scene selectivity and argue that greater insight could be gleaned by instead exploring the more distinct functions of each region, as well as their connectivity. Finally, with this last point in mind, we offer a novel hypothesis that scene regions supporting navigation (including the occipital place area and retrosplenial complex) mature later than those supporting scene categorization (including the parahippocampal place area).
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniel D. Dilks
- Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
| | - Yaelan Jung
- Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
| | - Frederik S. Kamps
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
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Cabral L, Calabro FJ, Rasmussen J, Foran W, Moore LA, Graham A, O'Connor TG, Wadhwa PD, Entringer S, Fair D, Buss C, Panigrahy A, Luna B. Gestational and postnatal age associations for striatal tissue iron deposition in early infancy. Dev Cogn Neurosci 2023; 63:101286. [PMID: 37549453 PMCID: PMC10423888 DOI: 10.1016/j.dcn.2023.101286] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/14/2023] [Revised: 06/28/2023] [Accepted: 07/21/2023] [Indexed: 08/09/2023] Open
Abstract
Striatal development is crucial for later motor, cognitive, and reward behavior, but age-related change in striatal physiology during the neonatal period remains understudied. An MRI-based measure of tissue iron deposition, T2*, is a non-invasive way to probe striatal physiology neonatally, linked to dopaminergic processing and cognition in children and adults. Striatal subregions have distinct functions that may come online at different time periods in early life. To identify if there are critical periods before or after birth, we measured if striatal iron accrued with gestational age at birth [range= 34.57-41.85 weeks] or postnatal age at scan [range= 5-64 days], using MRI to probe the T2* signal in N = 83 neonates in three striatal subregions. We found iron increased with postnatal age in the pallidum and putamen but not the caudate. No significant relationship between iron and gestational age was observed. Using a subset of infants scanned at preschool age (N = 26), we show distributions of iron shift between time points. In infants, the pallidum had the least iron of the three regions but had the most by preschool age. Together, this provides evidence of distinct change for striatal subregions, a possible differentiation between motor and cognitive systems, identifying a mechanism that may impact future trajectories.
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Affiliation(s)
- Laura Cabral
- Department of Radiology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
| | - Finnegan J Calabro
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA; Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
| | - Jerod Rasmussen
- Development, Health and Disease Research Program, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA; Department of Pediatrics, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA
| | - Will Foran
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
| | - Lucille A Moore
- Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain, University of Minnesota, USA
| | - Alice Graham
- Department of Psychiatry, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR 97239, USA
| | - Thomas G O'Connor
- Departments of Psychiatry, Neuroscience, and Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14642, USA
| | - Pathik D Wadhwa
- Development, Health, and Disease Research Program, Departments of Pediatrics, Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Epidemiology, University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine, Irvine, CA, USA; Department of Pediatrics, University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine, Orange, CA, USA; Departments of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Epidemiology, University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine, Orange, CA, USA
| | - Sonja Entringer
- Development, Health, and Disease Research Program, Departments of Pediatrics, Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Epidemiology, University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine, Irvine, CA, USA; Department of Pediatrics, University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine, Orange, CA, USA; Institute of Medical Psychology, Charité- Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Damien Fair
- Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain, University of Minnesota, USA
| | - Claudia Buss
- Development, Health, and Disease Research Program, Departments of Pediatrics, Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Epidemiology, University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine, Irvine, CA, USA; Department of Pediatrics, University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine, Orange, CA, USA; Institute of Medical Psychology, Charité- Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Ashok Panigrahy
- Department of Radiology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
| | - Beatriz Luna
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
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Cabral L, Calabro F, Rasmussen J, Foran W, Moore LA, Graham A, O'Connor TG, Wadhwa PD, Entringer S, Fair D, Buss C, Panigrahy A, Luna B. Gestational and postnatal age associations for striatal tissue iron deposition in early infancy. BIORXIV : THE PREPRINT SERVER FOR BIOLOGY 2023:2023.06.30.547249. [PMID: 37425933 PMCID: PMC10327226 DOI: 10.1101/2023.06.30.547249] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 07/11/2023]
Abstract
Striatal development is crucial for later motor, cognitive, and reward behavior, but age-related change in striatal physiology during the neonatal period remains understudied. An MRI-based measure of tissue iron deposition, T2*, is a non-invasive way to probe striatal physiology neonatally, linked to dopaminergic processing and cognition in children and adults. Striatal subregions have distinct functions that may come online at different time periods in early life. To identify if there are critical periods before or after birth, we measured if striatal iron accrued with gestational age at birth [range=34.57-41.85 weeks] or postnatal age at scan [range=5-64 days], using MRI to probe the T2* signal in N=83 neonates in three striatal subregions. We found iron increased with postnatal age in the pallidum and putamen but not the caudate. No significant relationship between iron and gestational age was observed. Using a subset of infants scanned at preschool age (N=26), we show distributions of iron shift between timepoints. In infants, the pallidum had the least iron of the three regions but had the most by preschool age. Together, this provides evidence of distinct change for striatal subregions, a possible differentiation between motor and cognitive systems, identifying a mechanism that may impact future trajectories. Highlights Neonatal striatal tissue iron can be measured using the T2* signal from rsfMRInT2* changed with postnatal age in the pallidum and putamen but not in the caudatenT2* did not change with gestational age in any of the three regionsPatterns of iron deposition (nT2*) among regions shift from infancy to preschool.
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Affiliation(s)
- Laura Cabral
- Department of Radiology University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
| | - Finn Calabro
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
| | - Jerod Rasmussen
- Development, Health and Disease Research Program, University of California, Irvine, California, USA 92697
| | - Will Foran
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
| | - Luci A Moore
- Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA 14642
| | - Alice Graham
- Department of Behavioral Neuroscience, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR, 97239, United States
| | - Thomas G O'Connor
- Departments of Psychiatry, Neuroscience, and Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, USA 14642
| | - Pathik D Wadhwa
- Development, Health and Disease Research Program, University of California, Irvine, California, USA 92697
| | - Sonja Entringer
- Development, Health and Disease Research Program, University of California, Irvine, California, USA 92697
- Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), Department of Medical Psychology, Berlin, Germany
| | - Damien Fair
- Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA 14642
| | - Claudia Buss
- Development, Health and Disease Research Program, University of California, Irvine, California, USA 92697
- Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), Department of Medical Psychology, Berlin, Germany
| | - Ashok Panigrahy
- Department of Radiology University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
| | - Beatriz Luna
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
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Truzzi A, Cusack R. The development of intrinsic timescales: A comparison between the neonate and adult brain. Neuroimage 2023; 275:120155. [PMID: 37169116 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120155] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/23/2023] [Revised: 05/01/2023] [Accepted: 05/02/2023] [Indexed: 05/13/2023] Open
Abstract
In human adults and other mammals, different brain regions have distinct intrinsic timescales over which they integrate information, from shorter in unimodal sensory-motor regions to longer in transmodal higher-order regions. These have been related to cognitive performance and clinical symptoms, but it remains unclear how they develop. We asked if there are regional differences in timescales at birth that could shape learning by acting as an inductive bias, or if they develop later as the temporal statistics of the environment are learned. We used resting-state fMRI to characterise timescales in human neonates and adults. They were highly consistent across two independent neonatal groups, but in both sensory-motor and higher order areas, timescales were longer in infants compared to adults, as might be expected from their less developed myelination, and recent evidence of longer neural segments in infants watching naturalistic stimuli. In adults, we replicated the finding that transmodal areas have longer timescales than sensory-motor areas, but in infants the opposite pattern was found, driven by long infant timescales in the somotomotor network. Across regions within single brain networks, both positive (limbic) and negative (visual) correlations were found between neonates and adults. In conclusion, neonatal timescales were found to be highly structured, but distinct from adults, suggesting they act as an inductive bias that favours learning on longer timescales, particularly in unimodal regions and then develop with experience or maturation. This "take it slow" initial approach might help human infants to create more regularised, holistic representations of the input less bound to fleeting details, which would favour the development of abstract and contextual representations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anna Truzzi
- School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland; Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
| | - Rhodri Cusack
- School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland; Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
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