title: Differences between human auditory event-related potentials (AERPs) measured at 2 and 4 months after birth.
abstract: Infant auditory event-related potentials (AERPs) show a series of marked changes during the first year of life. These AERP changes indicate important advances in early development. The current study examined AERP differences between 2- and 4-month-old infants. An auditory oddball paradigm was delivered to infants with a frequent repetitive tone and three rare auditory events. The three rare events included a shorter than the regular inter-stimulus interval (ISI-deviant), white noise segments, and environmental sounds. The results suggest that the N250 infantile AERP component emerges during this period in response to white noise but not to environmental sounds, possibly indicating a developmental step towards separating acoustic deviance from contextual novelty. The scalp distribution of the AERP response to both the white noise and the environmental sounds shifted towards frontal areas and AERP peak latencies were overall lower in infants at 4 than at 2 months of age. These observations indicate improvements in the speed of sound processing and maturation of the frontal attentional network in infants during this period.
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental Psychology, Tilburg University, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Marion I
authors.initials: MI
authors.lastname: van den Heuvel
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental Psychology, Tilburg University, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Renée A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Otte
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental Psychology, Tilburg University, The Netherlands; REVAL Rehabilitation Research Center, Biomedical Research Institute, Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences, Hasselt University, Belgium.
authors.forename: Marijke A K A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Braeken
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, Research Centre for Natural Sciences, MTA, Budapest, Hungary; Institute of Psychology, University of Szeged, Hungary.
authors.forename: István
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Winkler
authors.affiliation: Institute for Research in Child Development, University of East London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Kushnerenko
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental Psychology, Tilburg University, The Netherlands; Department of Psychology, Catholic University of Leuven - KU Leuven, Belgium; Department of Welfare, Public Health and Family, Flemish Government, Brussels, Belgium. Electronic address: Bea.vdnBergh@tilburguniversity.edu.
authors.forename: Bea R H
authors.initials: BR
authors.lastname: Van den Bergh
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male
keywords: Auditory attention; Auditory event-related potential; Cognitive development; Infancy; Oddball paradigm