Next-generation neuro: Studying the infant brain in motion

During a baby’s early months, the brain is developing rapidly.

Billions of neural connections form, expand, and are pruned back, shaped by genetics, the environment, and timing. Though brain development continues throughout life, the early months are critical, particularly when it comes to interactions between a parent and child.

What could scientists learn from high-quality brain function data during infancy?

With a new $2.3 million, four-year grant from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, part of the National Institutes of Health, researchers at Virginia Tech’s Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC are developing tools and techniques for gathering those data during naturalistic parent-child interactions.

“At the end of this work we’re going to be able to ask all sorts of important developmental questions about infants and mothers,” said Brittany Howell, an associate professor at Virginia Tech’s Fralin Biomedical Research Institute. “This work will lay the foundation for research that can help us understand both how patterns of neural activity change during development and how we can use this technology to identify patterns that point to potential risk for disorders, which could allow for early intervention.”

Co-lead investigator Read Montague, a professor at the research institute, is a pioneer in the use of OPM-MEG, optically pumped magnetometer-based magnetoencephalography, a non-invasive neuroimaging technology used to measure and localize the brain’s electrical activity with high spatial and temporal precision. 

OPM-MEG devices are lightweight, wearable headsets that measure brain activity with high resolution while allowing research volunteers to move freely and interact in more natural ways.

Montague established the Human Magnetometry Lab at the institute’s Roanoke headquarters to improve human neuroimaging by capturing recordings of upright, face-to-face social interactions between two people. 

There are relatively few OPM-MEG facilities worldwide, and even fewer that capture measurements in children and babies.[CE1] 

Brain scanning without interference

The OPM-MEG lab is a room within a room, its walls made from special materials that block magnetic interference from the world outside. With that gone, researchers can peer into the brain with special sensors that measure minute magnetic fields produced by neurons that are generating electrical signaling activity.

Before the research project begins, however, the space is getting a makeover. 

In the current configuration, researchers collect measurements within a central, one-cubic-meter space. “What we’re doing right now is we’re having mom hold baby within that field,” Howell said.

While effective, it is limiting.

In the next few months, technicians will travel to Roanoke to upgrade the space with wall-mounted matrix coils, which will expand the area used for measurements and can allow participants to move through the room as researchers gather recordings, a significant technological advancement.

“These parent-infant studies are really defining the leading edge of what’s possible with current human neuroimaging technology,” said Paul Sands, a research assistant professor in Montague’s lab who works with OPM-MEG to study human learning and decision making. 

Sands has worked with Montague in partnership with researchers at the University of Nottingham, who initially developed the OPM-MEG method, to engineer Virginia Tech’s lab for such next-generation neuroscience experiments. “OPM-MEG is still a new and rapidly developing technology, so it has taken a lot of careful validation work by our combined teams to reach this point where we are now uniquely capable of pursuing these kinds of studies,” Sands said. 

Researchers will recruit 80 parents and infants between 3 and 9 months. The team will refine the methods needed to collect high-quality brain data from freely moving infants and share these approaches with the scientific community. The work builds on a wearable headset Howell developed under a previous grant, a custom infant helmet that accommodates the MEG sensors. 

Rather than being seated, completing screen-based tasks, or lying down for conventional infant EEG recordings, the new OPM-MEG system will allow researchers to capture real-time brain activity during natural social interactions.

“We can match their spontaneous movement to actual brain activity in a way that we can’t do well with the current technology,” Howell said.

Howell will use the technology to explore infant feeding and early food-choice behaviors. The approach can also be used to investigate early motor development and language-object learning, and it may one day help identify early markers of developmental disorders.

Howell also holds a faculty appointment as an associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Science in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. Montague is also a physics professor in the College of Science and director of the research institute’s Center for Human Neuroscience Research.

 

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