Unveiling the Looming-Related Brain Response for Cognitive Monitoring in Infants

Understanding how infants perceive and react to rapidly approaching objects is crucial for their survival. Full-term infants naturally develop efficient perceptual mechanisms for assessing looming objects as they grow older. However, preterm infants may face challenges in this development, which can lead to perceptuo-motor deficits later in life. Early diagnosis and intervention could potentially improve their future quality of life. To explore the feasibility of using the looming-related brain response for diagnosis and neurofeedback, researchers investigated the relevance of different biomarkers associated with this response. The study focused on cross-participant classification, aiming to identify discriminant features in the time-frequency domain across different developmental stages (3-4 months and 11-12 months). The results showed that the time-frequency domain was particularly informative for classifying the looming-related brain response. The selected features achieved a cross-participant classification accuracy of 69% for 11-12-month-old infants and 62% for 3-4-month-old infants. The study also integrated the classification models into an online framework, paving the way for future online classification and feedback. While the online framework was only tested offline in this study, it holds promise for facilitating real-time diagnosis and intervention. In conclusion, the study demonstrates the potential of utilizing the looming-related brain response for infant diagnosis and intervention. The findings provide valuable insights into the development of perceptual mechanisms in infants and offer hope for improving outcomes in preterm infants through early detection and targeted support.

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