Anticipatory cortical activation precedes auditory events in sleeping infants.

摘要: Background Behavioral studies have shown that infants can form associations between environmental events and produce anticipatory actions for the predictable event, but neural mechanisms learning anticipation of in are not known. Recent neuroimaging revealed association cortices show activation related to auditory-stimulus discrimination novelty detection during sleep. In present study, we expected when an auditory cue (beeps) predicted event (a female voice), specific regions infant cortex would before onset even while sleeping. Methodology/Principal Findings We examined cortical 3-month-old delays by using multi-channel near-infrared spectroscopy. To investigate spatiotemporal changes over experimental session, divided session into two phases (early late phase) analyzed each phase separately. early phase, frontal showed response was followed compared with another any event. temporoparietal region, addition prominent contrast, no-event equal proportions, observed phase. Conclusions Sleeping only predicting suggesting implicitly temporally separated generate Furthermore, different time evolution suggests these may be involved aspects future events.