Dima Amso, Ph.D. - US grants

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This is a revised K01 proposal designed to foster expertise in the application of neuroimaging to a developmental investigation of learning based on environmental statistics, namely frequency and association-based learning. The candidate has formulated a detailed career development plan composed of didactic coursework, neuroimaging workshops, and ongoing supervision, training, and consultation with field experts. The proposed training will be conducted at the Sackler Institute at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University. The Sackler houses several world-renowned cognitive developmental neuroscientists and is one of the few facilities dedicated entirely to developmental research using neuroimaging technology. In previous work, we found the striatum to be involved in simple frequency-based learning and the hippocampus to be involved in associative learning. We will test the hypothesis that while these forms of learning are intact early in development, the ability to efficiently maintain information during learning and adjust behavior when learned information is violated by novel information develops more gradually as the underlying neural circuitry (e.g., frontostriatal and frontohippocampal circuits) is organized. Statistical manipulations in the frequency with which stimuli are presented and/or associated with other stimuli will be the primary manipulation. Saccade latency in infants, and both saccade latency and reaction times in children, adolescents, and adults will be used as behavioral dependent measures. In a separate session, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI)will be used with the same children, adolescents, and adults to assess changes in the recruitment of brain areas and in connectivity between these areas as a function of learning and development. These studies have significant implications for children born preterm and very low birth weight (VLBW, <1500 grams) who are highly susceptible to subtle striatal and hippocampal injury in the perinatal period, and approximately 40% of who will have some learning disability. By tracking changes in the learning functions of this circuitry across typical development, these studies will lay the foundation for clinical studies that can identify precise learning disruption (specific to striatal or hippocampal circuitry) and associated outcomes and learning disabilities in this preterm and VLBW population. The K01 studies will provide a means by which interpretations of data from future clinical studies can be constrained.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Development is charactarized by increasing flexibility in thought and action, enabeling the generalization of rules from item-specific instances to abstract classes of rules that support flexible behavior and can be generalized to novel situations. We capitalized on an established paradigm that has been effective in charactarizing this skill in adults in behavioral and fMRI experiments, and also in patients with frontal damage. This work has shown that increasing complexity in rule-guided action recruites the frontal cortex along a rostro- caudal axis. We hypothesize here that the functional development of the frontal cortex, from middle childhood to adulthood, and associated behavioral performance will follow the same pattern. Specifically, we predict that mature behavior in simple rule tasks will be evident earlier in development than more complex tasks and that this will be associated with functional effiency at the level of the frontal cortex in caudal prior to rostral regions. Using th extant literature, we predict that this functional development is a reflection of increases in the stability of cortical coding of rule-relevant representations. We test this hypothesis using multi-voxel pattern classification algorithms designed to decode the stability of rule-relevant representations across development. Moreover, we test the prediction that representational stability is dependent on experience. Portions of the frontal cortex have an especially protracted developmental course and have been shown to be susceptible to both positive and negative environmental experiences. Rather than use age as a proxy for experience, we turn to socioeconomic status (SES), which has been shown to be a predictor of cognitive control development. Availability of items, interactions, and experiences in high relative to low SES families may prove relevant for experience-based changes in representational stability at the level of the frontal cortex. Moreover, variability among experiences is necessarily more relevant for the development of abstract rather than concrete rule representations, indicating that the impact of SES differences may be evident specific to the development of abstract rule structures. We will examine the specific contribution of SES, as a proxy for enriching experiences, to the development of rule-guided action in both behavioral and neuroimaging experiments. RELEVANCE Item-specific concreteness and perseveration are ubiquitous in developmental disorders including Autism, ADHD, and OCD. We propose to characterize development of rule use at varying levels of abstraction, allowing for novel specificity in understanding the deveopmental course of these skills. Uncovering a specific relationship with experience-based factors (SES) in this development has the added potential of defining variables that confer risk specific to cognitive flexibility and will inform social and educational policy moving forward.

PROJECT SUMMARY (See instructions): Visual attention is a general information gathering mechanism that is central to cognitive, emotional, and perceptual development. Visual scenes are cluttered with more information than can be managed at once. The role of visual attention is to organize eye gaze patterns in such scenes, thereby supporting the first step in information gathering, perception, and learning. Although the timing of the development of visual attention is understood, the explanatory variables that underlie its development are not well known. This project aims to characterize the variables that contribute to typical and atypical visual attention. Previous findings related to visual attention and computational vision lead to the hypothesis that integrity of visual processing is fundamental to the development of visual attention. Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and their at-risk infant siblings show both atypical visual and attentional abilities. We hypothesize that differences in visual attention in ASD are a result of atypical visual processing. This proposal will test this hypothesis in infancy when these skills emerge, and then from childhood through adulthood as these skills continue to refine. We will test our predictions using standard attention and visual function tasks, in concert with behavioral eye-tracking and neuroimaging methods. This work has the potential to provide a foundation for understanding what may be a pivotal and foundational disruption in behavioral and neural circuitry development underlying ASD.

PROJECT SUMMARY The aims of this proposal are to fully develop and validate the SmartPlayroom as a powerful automated data collection and analysis tool in developmental research. This room looks like any playroom in a home or school but is designed to naturalistically collect data in real time and simultaneously on all aspects of children's behavior. Behaviors include movement kinematics, language, eye movements, and social interaction while a child performs naturalistic tasks, plays and explores without instruction, walks or crawls, and interacts with a caregiver. The space is equipped with mobile eye tracking, wireless physiological heart rate and galvanic skin response sensors, audio and video recording, and depth sensor technologies. Funding is requested to demonstrate the scientific advantage of naturalistic measurement using an example from visual attention research (Aim 1), and in the process, to provide data to further develop flexible computer vision algorithms for automated behavioral analysis for use in 4-9 year-old children (Aim 2). By combining fine-grained sensor data with high-throughput automated computer vision and machine learning tools, we will be able to automate quantitative data collection and analysis in the SmartPlayroom for use in addressing myriad developmental questions. The SmartPlayroom approach overcomes completely the limitations of task-based experimentation in developmental research, offering quantitative precision in the collection of ecologically valid data. It has the power to magnify both construct validity and measurement reliability in developmental research. The investigators are committed to making freely available our data, computer vision algorithms, and discoveries so that we might move the field forward quickly.

Working memory (WM) is relevant to planning, decision-making, and regulating behavior and emotions. This process undergoes important development during early childhood, and is shaped by family socioeconomic status (SES). WM, in turn, shapes children's progress in school, and has been shown to mediate the association between SES and academic achievement. Traditional laboratory assessments may fail to capture the complexity of WM behavior and conditions under which WM operates most optimally; thereby, limiting opportunity for evidence-based recommendations for education. In order to address this gap in the literature, the research team will measure the impact of SES on WM development in children 3.5 to 6 years old using parallel computerized and naturalistic play-based settings.

The researchers will use a rule-based WM task, where children are instructed to match a door to a house (or a beak to a bird) based on either one (e.g, color) or two (e.g. shape and color) visual feature dimensions. In daily life, WM does not function in isolation, but is paired with motivation to succeed. Thus, in order to increase the ecological and construct validity of WM assessment in both computerized and play-based testing settings, researchers included three conditions designed to assess how engaging motivational mechanisms impacts WM performance. The Choice condition is identical to the Standard condition, but children choose the houses that they want to play with; the Reward condition is identical to the Standard except the children earn a sticker after correct trials. The Reward+Choice condition combines the Reward and Choice manipulations. A central component of the study involves determining whether the impact of SES on WM is constant across computerized and play-based settings, or whether the impact diminishes as WM tasks increase in ecological and construct validity. To address this issue, the researchers will collect data on experiences in children's lives that may mirror the computerized and play-based testing environments. SES impact on WM performance in computerized and standard assessments may be mediated by formal instruction opportunities in and outside the home (art or music classes) as well as digital device use and skill. The researchers will also collect data on experiences in children's lives that may support WM development but be independent of SES. For example, individual differences in pretend play engagement may be related to WM performance in play-based settings, independent of SES. These predictions will be tested using structural equation modeling. Findings will provide novel insights regarding optimal WM performance in young children across various levels of SES. Findings will also have implications for shaping early childhood curricula in ways that will benefit children across various levels of SES.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.