Functional maturation in visual pathways predicts attention to the eyes in infant rhesus macaques: Effects of social status

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Aiden Ford, Emory University; Zsofia A Kovacs-Balint, Emory University; Arick Wang, Emory University; Eric Feczko, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; Eric Earl, National Institute of Mental Health, NIH, DHHS, Bethesda; Óscar Miranda-Domínguez, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; Longchuan Li, Emory University; Martin Styner, University of North Carolina; Damien Fair, Univ Minnesota; Warren Jones, Emory University; Jocelyne Bachevalier, Emory University; Maria Sanchez, Emory University
• Language: English
• Date: 2023-04-01
• Publisher: ELSEVIER SCI LTD
• Publication Version: Final Published Version
• Copyright Statement: © 2023 The Authors
• License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2023.101213
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: DEVELOPMENTAL COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE
• Volume: 60
• Start Page: 101213
• End Page: 101213
• Grant/Funding Information: This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH, United States of America (USA)) grant numbers MH100029, MH078105–01S1, MH078105–04S1, MH119251, MH091645, MH086633, MH096773, K99/R00 MH091238, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (USA) U54 HD079124, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (USA) EB027147, National Library of Medicine (USA) T15LM007088, the Oregon Clinical and Translational Institute (USA, grant number CTSA UL1TR000128), the Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain, the Lynne and Andrew Redleaf Foundation, and the NIH’s Office of the Director, Office of Research Infrastructure Programs, P51OD011132 (Emory National Primate Research Center (ENPRC) Base Grant). The ENPRC is fully accredited by AAALAC, International.
• Keywords: Infant development; Brain-behavior associations; Neurosciences & Neurology; PATTERNS; Neurosciences; Visual object pathway; Psychology, Developmental; Social attention; LOBE; Resting state fMRI; CONNECTIONS; INFERIOR TEMPORAL CORTEX; AREAS; Social Sciences; Life Sciences & Biomedicine; FACIAL EXPRESSIONS; Science & Technology; MECHANISMS; Psychology; Nonhuman primate; FACE-LIKE STIMULI; BEHAVIOR; MONKEY
• Research Categories: Health Sciences, Mental Health; Biology, Neuroscience; Psychology, Behavioral; Health Sciences, Human Development; Health Sciences, Radiology

Abstract

Differences in looking at the eyes of others are one of the earliest behavioral markers for social difficulties in neurodevelopmental disabilities, including autism. However, it is unknown how early visuo-social experiences relate to the maturation of infant brain networks that process visual social stimuli. We investigated functional connectivity (FC) within the ventral visual object pathway as a contributing neural system. Densely sampled, longitudinal eye-tracking and resting state fMRI (rs-fMRI) data were collected from infant rhesus macaques, an important model of human social development, from birth through 6 months of age. Mean trajectories were fit for both datasets and individual trajectories from subjects with both eye-tracking and rs-fMRI data were used to test for brain-behavior relationships. Exploratory findings showed infants with greater increases in FC between left V1 to V3 visual areas have an earlier increase in eye-looking before 2 months. This relationship was moderated by social status such that infants with low social status had a stronger association between left V1 to V3 connectivity and eye-looking than high status infants. Results indicated that maturation of the visual object pathway may provide an important neural substrate supporting adaptive transitions in social visual attention during infancy.