Abstract
Increasing evidence suggests that brain signal variability is an important measure of brain function reflecting information processing capacity and functional integrity. In this study, we examined how maturation from childhood to adulthood affects the magnitude and spatial extent of state-to-state transitions in brain signal variability, and how this relates to cognitive performance. We looked at variability changes between resting-state and task (a symbol-matching task with three levels of difficulty), and within trial (fixation, post-stimulus, and post-response). We calculated variability with multiscale entropy (MSE), and additionally examined spectral power density (SPD) from electroencephalography (EEG) in children aged 8–14, and in adults aged 18–33. Our results suggest that maturation is characterized by increased local information processing (higher MSE at fine temporal scales) and decreased long-range interactions with other neural populations (lower MSE at coarse temporal scales). Children show MSE changes that are similar in magnitude, but greater in spatial extent when transitioning between internally- and externally-driven brain states. Additionally, we found that in children, greater changes in task difficulty were associated with greater magnitude of modulation in MSE. Our results suggest that the interplay between maturational and state-to-state changes in brain signal variability manifest across different spatial and temporal scales, and influence information processing capacity in the brain.
Highlights
Recent research suggests that variability in brain signal is an important parameter reflecting information processing capacity and functional integrity [1,2,3]
In the context of maturation from childhood to adulthood, we investigated state-to-state modulations in brain signal variability during resting-state and task, and examined how these changes relate to task performance
We found broad increases in brain signal variability during resting-state as compared to task, and showed that these increases were greater in spatial expression in children as compared to adults
Summary
Recent research suggests that variability in brain signal is an important parameter reflecting information processing capacity and functional integrity [1,2,3]. Post-stimulus processing stabilizes a given state, reducing variability (i.e., a context in which interpretable transmission of information is necessary) and must remain reduced in regions that support task processing while processing is ongoing It remains unknown how within-subject state-to-state transitions relate to maturation from childhood to young adulthood, and to cognitive performance. Using EEG, Sleimen-Malkoun and colleagues [11] examined how old age affects dynamic variability fluctuations between resting-state and an auditory oddball task They measured variability using multiscale entropy (MSE), a measure that is sensitive to linear and nonlinear variability, and emphasizes the way signals behave over a range of temporal scales from fine (e.g., over milliseconds) to coarse (over minutes) [19]. We hypothesized that state-to-state modulations in variability would be larger and more widespread in children than in adults
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