One of the most interesting fields in neuroscience research is developmental research, or the study of how neural development affects behavior. As Martha Ann Bell described in her talk, developmental research is incredibly complex and dynamic, with many factors leading to behavioral development. One behavior of interest in this field is the development of inhibitory control, an aspect of executive function which pertains to one’s ability to hold back an initial response so that they form a more complex one. This is a widely studied aspect of development, one in which Dr. Bell and Dr McKay take two differing approaches to study.
Dr.
Bell from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University is a brilliant
professor who has done child development research for over 30 years. In
her research, she is primarily interested in examining how inhibitory control
is developed over time and analyzes how a mother-child relationship affects
this development. In her lab, she primarily uses electroencephalography (EEG),
which measures electrical activity across the brain, to analyze the activity of
the prefrontal cortex, a region relevant for higher-level thinking. In previous
research, she has shown through EEG that there is an increased activity level
in the prefrontal cortex between the ages of one and four, which is followed by
a subsequent decrease in activity. With this, she found an increase in inhibitory
control capabilities and was able to correlate these two activities together.
Furthermore, when analyzing the importance of the mother-child relationship,
she found that a positive mother-child experience was correlated with better
performance on inhibitory control-related tasks, showing the importance of the
effect a mother can have on their child’s development. After she gave her talk,
I wondered what other aspects of a child’s life are contributing to their behavioral
development, which led me to the work of Dr. McKay.
Taking
a different approach to development research, Dr. McKay, a graduate student
from the University of Stirling, was interested in analyzing the effects of
holding back a child one year before going into formal education on inhibitory
control. To measure brain activity in the prefrontal areas, Dr. McKay used a
different method to measure brain activity, named functional near-infared spectroscopy (fNIRS).
FNIRS analyzes the levels of oxygenation in the blood, in which more oxygen
represents an increase in activity within a given area of the brain, as it is a
vital resource for neuronal function. Through her analyses of the difference
between these two schooling methods, Dr. McKay found that there was an increase
in prefrontal area activation, which then subsequently led to an increase in
performance in tasks related to inhibitory control, showing the effect that
these two different schooling methods had on inhibitory control.
Both
researchers show how the same field, and even same behavior can be studied in
vastly different ways. Additionally, they prove to
us how complex development is, as there are even more factors that end up
contributing to behaviors such as inhibitory control. I think one of the most
interesting points that Dr. Bell made in her talk was about this idea of
individual differences, as every single person has slight differences between
others. This makes the field of developmental research even more difficult to
carry out, but also makes it that much more interesting. Through the works of
these two researchers, we can better understand how a child may be affected by
the environment in which they grew up in, to which we can develop effective
methods to create a healthy environment for child development.
References
McKay,
C., Wijeakumer, S., Rafetseder, E., & Shing, Y. L. (2021). Disentangling
age and schooling effects on inhibitory control development: an fNIRS
investigation. Developmental Science. 25(5). https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13205
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