Electrophysiologic analysis of regional cortical maturation.
Some issues in the study of human neurobehavioral development are briefly set forth. Attention is called to the limitations of strictly structural and behavioral approaches. The value of correlative morphophysiological and psychophysiological investigations is emphasized. By averaging brain activity with respect to stimuli and motor responses, event-related cortical potentials (ERP) can be reliably detected in the scalp EEG. Longitudinal topographic studies of ERP permit the definition of a sequence of regional cortical maturation during infancy and childhood. We have found that evoked potentials in the three major sensory modalities arise from both primary and secondary projection areas by 30 weeks of conceptional age. Frontocentral responses appear shortly thereafter. Thus, cortical mechanisms show a precocious development of electrogenesis which indicates the possibility for an early environmental impact on brain maturation. In contrast to the evoked potentials, association cortex potentials (ACP) do not seem to appear until early childhood. The behavioral significance of these neuroelectric phenomena is being sought in studies employing techniques which permit the concurrent recording of brain activity and behavioral responses in the waking infant and child. Some of the problems confronting the application of these methods to studies of infants are outlined.