Mapping the sensory spectrum: unraveling variability in young children’s brain responses
Résumé
Early childhood is a sensitive period of development, marked by a high degree of cerebral plasticity, and by high between and within individual variability in the acquisition of cognitive and social abilities. Electroencephalography (EEG) can be used to study this cerebral variability and has revealed not only a high degree of heterogeneity between children, but also some intra-individual variability in certain children. Our aim was to characterize EEG individual profiles of young children between 2,5 and 6 years old. We recorded event-related potentials evoked by sensory stimulations in different sensory modalities (visual, auditive and tactile), and with different levels of complexity (stimuli of low perceptual level, complex and social stimuli). 23 children (13 girls) without neurodevelopmental disorder diagnosis, aged 47.8 months (± 10.5) [30 64] partook in the study. For each participant, we analyzed ERPs peak amplitudes and latencies for each condition (modality by complexity level). In addition, we calculated the median absolute deviation and the inter-trial consistency as measures of intra-individual variability. A hierarchical cluster analysis on the Euclidian distance calculated using all EEG parameters between each participant revealed 4 clusters. Two multinomial logistic regression were tested to evaluate the effects of cognitive parameters (index of visuo- spatial reasoning, sound discrimination, age) and sensory parameters (Dunn’s sensory score - SP, mean ITC level) respectively, on cluster membership. In the 1st model, we found that age (F(3,30) = 7.8, p = 0.056) and sound discrimination (F(3,30) = 15.4, p=0.015) partly explains cluster membership. One cluster comprised only children under 50 months, with good homogeneous sound discrimination scores while two of the other clusters mainly comprised older children with heterogeneous sound discrimination scores. The 2nd model revealed that cluster membership was driven by interactions of SP tactile scores with audio scores (F(3, 30) = 14.6, p < 0.01), and with visual scores (F(3,30) = 27.9, p < 0.001). Neurophysiological sensory profiles of young children appeared to differ mainly according to age and therefore may reflect cerebral maturation. Yet, they also seem to be linked to children’s cognitive abilities and sensory profiles. Multisensorial EEG profiles appear a good measure of a child development. EEG profiles could help better understand the developmental trajectory of children, in particular those with neurodevelopmental disorders. The main limitation of this work is the limited number of participants, considering the wide heterogeneity of cerebral development.
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