Development of executive function-relevant skills is related to both neural structure and function in infants.

ABSTRACT: The development of skills related to executive function (EF) in infancy, including their emergence, underlying neural mechanisms, and interconnections to other cognitive skills, is an area of increasing research interest. Here, we report on findings from a multidimensional dataset demonstrating that infants' behavioral performance on a flexible learning task improved across development and that the task performance is highly correlated with both neural structure and neural function. The flexible learning task probed infants' ability to learn two different associations, concurrently, over 16 trials, requiring multiple skills relevant to EF. We examined infants' neural structure by measuring myelin density in the brain, using a novel macromolecular proton fraction (MPF) mapping method. We fu

SUBMITTER: Zhao TC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9620956 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature