Top-down sensory prediction in the infant brain at 6 months is correlated with language development at 12 and 18 months

• Published in: Brain and language 2022-07, Vol.230, p.105129-105129, Article 105129
• Main Authors: Wang, Shinmin, Zhang, Xian, Hong, Tian, Tzeng, Ovid J.L., Aslin, Richard
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Brain; fNIRS; Infant; Infants; Language acquisition; Language development; Neurolinguistics; Top-down prediction; Vocabulary
• ISSN: 0093-934X; 1090-2155
• DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2022.105129

•Top-down sensory prediction facilitates transmission of information in the brain.•It is unclear the role of top-down sensory prediction in vocabulary development.•Brain activation related to top-down sensory prediction was measured at 6 months.•Infants’ vocabulary skills were measured at 12 months and 18 months.•Hemodynamic response at 6 months predicts later expressive vocabulary development. Previous research has suggested that top-down sensory prediction facilitates, and may be necessary for, efficient transmission of information in the brain. Here we related infants’ vocabulary development to the top-down sensory prediction indexed by occipital cortex activation to the unexpected absence of a visual stimulus previously paired with an auditory stimulus. The magnitude of the neural response to the unexpected omission of a visual stimulus was assessed at the age of 6 months with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and vocabulary scores were obtained using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (MCDI) when infants reached the age of 12 months and 18 months, respectively. Results indicated significant positive correlations between this predictive neural signal at 6 months and MCDI expressive vocabulary scores at 12 and 18 months. These findings provide additional and robust support for the hypothesis that top-down prediction at the neural level plays a key role in infants’ language development.