Development of long-term event memory in preverbal infants: an eye-tracking study

Early brain magnetic resonance imaging findings and neurodevelopmental outcome in children with congenital heart disease: A systematic review

AIM

To investigate the association between early brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings and neurodevelopmental outcome (NDO) in children with congenital heart disease (CHD).

METHOD

A search for studies was conducted in Embase, Medline, Web of Science, Cochrane Central, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar. Observational and interventional studies were included, in which patients with CHD underwent surgery before 2 months of age, a brain MRI scan in the first year of life, and neurodevelopmental assessment beyond the age of 1 year.

RESULTS

Eighteen studies were included. Thirteen found an association between either quantitative or qualitative brain metrics and NDO: 5 out of 7 studies showed decreased brain volume was significantly associated with worse NDO, as did 7 out of 10 studies on brain injury. Scanning protocols and neurodevelopmental tests varied strongly.

INTERPRETATION

Reduced brain volume and brain injury in patients with CHD can be associated with impaired NDO, yet standardized scanning protocols and neurodevelopmental assessment are needed to further unravel trajectories of impaired brain development and its effects on outcome.

The Eyes Are More Eloquent Than Words: Anticipatory Looking as an Index of Event Memory in Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a disorder in which individuals experience a difficulty in maintaining event memory for when, where, who, and what. However, verbal deficiency, one of the other symptoms of AD, may prevent a precise diagnosis of event memory because existing tests are based on verbal instructions by the tester and verbal response from patient. Therefore, non-verbal methods are essential to evaluate event memory in AD. The present study, using eye tracking, investigated whether AD patients deployed anticipatory looking to target acts related to future events based on previous experience when an identical video was presented to them twice. The results revealed the presence of anticipatory looking, although AD patients were unable to verbally report the content of the video. Our results illustrate that AD patients have a one-time event memory better than previously thought.

Phylogeny and ontogeny of mental time

Humans have mental time in our mind, apart from physical time that is a part of system that governs the physical world, and memory is our key cognitive ability for recognizing the passage of time. Recent studies have suggested that the memory system of several nonhuman animals may have an incidental nature, which is also a feature of episodic memory. In addition, apes, which are phylogenetically close to humans, have an ability to remember a single past event. In the case of humans, preverbal infants under the age of two are able to retain long-term memory of a single event and apply it to predict a future event. Thus, nonhuman animals and preverbal human infants both have their own specific mental time travel abilities, and there is a phylogenetic and ontogenic basis of full-fledged mental time travel that can be found in human adults.

Event Perception and Memory

Events make up much of our lived experience, and the perceptual mechanisms that represent events in experience have pervasive effects on action control, language use, and remembering. Event representations in both perception and memory have rich internal structure and connections one to another, and both are heavily informed by knowledge accumulated from previous experiences. Event perception and memory have been identified with specific computational and neural mechanisms, which show protracted development in childhood and are affected by language use, expertise, and brain disorders and injuries. Current theoretical approaches focus on the mechanisms by which events are segmented from ongoing experience, and emphasize the common coding of events for perception, action, and memory. Abetted by developments in eye-tracking, neuroimaging, and computer science, research on event perception and memory is moving from small-scale laboratory analogs to the complexity of events in the wild.

Establishing a mental lexicon with cochlear implants: an ERP study with young children

In the present study we explore the implications of acquiring language when relying mainly or exclusively on input from a cochlear implant (CI), a device providing auditory input to otherwise deaf individuals. We focus on the time course of semantic learning in children within the second year of implant use; a period that equals the auditory age of normal hearing children during which vocabulary emerges and extends dramatically. 32 young bilaterally implanted children saw pictures paired with either matching or non-matching auditory words. Their electroencephalographic responses were recorded after 12, 18 and 24 months of implant use, revealing a large dichotomy: Some children failed to show semantic processing throughout their second year of CI use, which fell in line with their poor language outcomes. The majority of children, though, demonstrated semantic processing in form of the so-called N400 effect already after 12 months of implant use, even when their language experience relied exclusively on the implant. This is slightly earlier than observed for normal hearing children of the same auditory age, suggesting that more mature cognitive faculties at the beginning of language acquisition lead to faster semantic learning.