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In our newest publication, we discuss and describe how a recent approach to data analysis, namely neural tracking, can be applied to infant EEG data. In most of our studies, we use a different approach called event-related potentials (ERPs), which works quite well but requires the baby to watch the same picture (or listen to the same sound) over and over again. Obviously, this starts to get boring very quickly. Using neural tracking, we can analyze the baby’s brain responses to a constantly changing signal; listening to a story, watching a cartoon, or observing other people interacting in real life. Using this approach, we can therefore design experiments that are much more exciting and at the same time much closer to natural situations.

Further information and all the mathematical details can be found here:

Jessen, S., Obleser, J., & Tune, S. (in press).  Neural Tracking in Infants – an Analytical Tool for Multisensory Social Processing in Development, Dev Cogn Neurosci

Our PhD student Bernadette Hippmann published a new article in Human Brain Mapping. In the study, she tested adult participants in an fMRI paradigm, investigating the neural connectivity behind executive control and the influence of reward vs. punishment. The full article can be found here:

Hippmann, B., Tzvi, E., Göttlich, M., Weiblen, R., Münte, T., & Jessen, S. (2021). Effective connectivity underlying reward-based executive control. Human Brain Mapping.

Measurements and testing in the Babylab still aren’t back to normal due to the impact of the pandemic, but we are nevertheless busy writing and analyzing data. Have a look at the commentary that just came out in Psychological Science, in which we in collaboration with several other researchers discuss entrainment and infant EEG data.

Keitel, C., Obleser, J, Jessen, S. & Henry, M. (2021). Frequency-Specific Effects in Infant Electroencephalograms Do Not Require Entrained Neural Oscillations: A Commentary on Köster et al. (2019). Psychological Science, 1-6.

First results from our project on the impact of maternal odor on emotion processing in infancy are out!

Testing 7-month-olds in an EEG paradigm, we found that infants at this age show a reduced fear response when they can smell their mother. This suggests that maternal odor might be a strong enough signal to make the baby feel safe and reduce their need to pay increased attention to potential threats in the environment. We also found that breastfeeding might have a similar effect – while babies who were not breastfed any more showed the expected attentional response to fearful faces, this response was absent in breastfed babies.

Jessen, S. (2020). Maternal odor reduces the neural response to fearful faces in human infants. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 45, 100858.

The safety of our participants, their family and our lab members is our top priority.

Therefore we strictly follow the safety guidelines for measurements developed by the University of Lübeck in times of Corona.

Specifically, this means:

• All measurements at the lab take place following the current 2G+ guidelines, meaning that all adults coming to the lab must either be fully vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 and additionally provide a current official COVID-19 test result unless they have received a booster shot. We will check this upon arrival in the lab. All lab members are also fully vaccinated and boostered.
• On the day before the measurement, we will contact you by phone to go through a specific checklist to make sure no participant shows any potential symptoms associated with COVID-19. We will go through the same list again upon arrival in the lab.
• All lab members wear FFP2-masks at all times when in contact with participant, and we also ask parents to wear an FFP2-mask.
• All rooms are well ventilated and all materials are disinfected regularly.
• We ask you to bring your own toys. Currently we are unable to provide toys for your infant because of hygienic standards.
• If possible, one parent only should come with the infant; in particular, please don’t bring any other persons who are not members of your household along (hence, second parent and siblings are okay).

If you decide to participate in our experiment, we will discuss these guidelines again in detail on the phone and address any further questions you might have.

Our new review article discussing the current state of research on unconscious face processing in infancy was just accepted!

Jessen, S., & Grossmann, T. (in press). The developmental origins of subliminal face processing. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. 

In a new study in adult participants conducted by our collaborators in Maastricht, we investigated the role of early visual cortices for the processing of facial trustworthiness. To that end, processing in early visual cortices in adults was interrupted using so-called trans-cranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Even when TMS was applied, participants showed comparable behavioural judgements of trustworthiness, suggesting that at least some aspects of facial trustworthiness can be processed without having to rely on early visual areas. Further information can be found here Janssens, S.E.W., Sack, A.T., Jessen, S., & de Graaf, T. (2020). Can processing of face trustworthiness bypass early visual cortex? A transcranial magnetic stimulation study. Neuropsychologia, 137.

Finally – we have the first results from our odor study. We invited 91 babies (and their moms) from Lübeck and the surrounding area to the lab to test how the mother’s familiar scent would impact the babies’ response to emotional, in particular fearful, faces. 7-month-olds typically show an enhanced EEG response to fearful faces, and we wanted to see how this might change if the baby smells their mother, a different mother, or no particular smell. Interestingly, the babies who smelled a different mother or no particular scent showed the expected fear response, while this response was absent in the babies who could smell their mother. Hence, maternal odor seems to result in a reduction in the fear response of 7-month-old infants.

Check here for further information: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/827626v1

Our first study from Lübeck! And it’s a more methods-oriented project. Most EEG studies in infants rely on the analysis of so-called event-related brain potentials (ERPs), meaning that we need to show the babies a large number of very similar pictures (or sounds) in order to be able to then compute mean brain response to these pictures (or sounds). For the babys, this is often just as boring as it sounds. Also, it’s quite different from real life, where we rarely see the same piece of information over and over again. In this project, we therefore borrowed an analysis approach from adult research to try something different. We invited babys to the lab and had them watch one episode of “Peppa Pig”, while we recorded their EEG-signal. Afterwards, we used so-called encoding models to compute the relationship between the ongoing EEG-signal and a number of video parameters, in particular the audio and the (visual) motion content. For both of these parameters, we could obtain very robust and clear-cut responses. In the future, such approaches might be used to design more naturalistic and fun experiments for our participants.

Jessen, S., Fiedler, L., Münte, T.F., & Obleser, J. (in press). Quantifying the individual auditory and visual brain response in 7-month-old infants watching a brief cartoon movie. NeuroImage.

In prior studies, we could show that infants process faces perceived by adults as particularly trustworthy different from those that were judged by adults as less trustworthy. In our new study, we investigated whether infants make use of this trustworthiness information and process objects differently, depending on whether a face looking at that object looks trustworthy. This seems to be the case; both trustworthiness and direction of gaze influence how an infant processes a new object.

Jessen, S. & Grossmann, T. (2019). Neural evidence for the impact of facial trustworthiness on object processing in a gaze-cueing task in 7-month-old infants, Social Neuroscience.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17470919.2019.1651764?journalCode=psns20