Papers by Tobias Grossmann
Infant Behavior & Development, Aug 1, 2022
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Introduction. Variability in the motivation to approach or withdraw from others displayed in infa... more Introduction. Variability in the motivation to approach or withdraw from others displayed in infancy is thought to have long-term effects on human social development. Frontal brain asymmetry has been linked to motivational processes in infants and adults, with greater left frontal asymmetry reflecting motivation to approach and greater right frontal asymmetry reflecting motivation to withdraw. We examined the hypothesis that variability in infants’ social motivation is linked to genetic variation in the endogenous oxytocin system. Specifically, we measured infants’ frontal brain asymmetry and later looking preferences to smiling and frowning individuals and assayed a single-nucleotide polymorphism in the CD38 gene (rs3796863) linked to autism spectrum disorder and reduced peripheral oxytocin levels. Methods. 77 11-month-old infants’ (36 female) brain responses were measured via functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) while viewing four individuals display either smiles or frow...
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Forming an impression of another person is an essential aspect of human social cognition linked t... more Forming an impression of another person is an essential aspect of human social cognition linked to medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) function in adults. The current study examined the neurodevelopmental origins of impression formation by testing the hypothesis that infants rely on processes localized in mPFC when forming impressions about individuals who appear friendly or threatening. Infants’ brain responses were measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) while watching four different face identities displaying either smiles or frowns directed toward or away from them (N = 77). This was followed by a looking preference test for these face identities (now displaying a neutral expression) using eyetracking. Our results show that infants’ mPFC responses distinguish between smiling and frowning faces when directed at them and that these responses predicted their subsequent person preferences. This suggests that the mPFC is involved in impression formation in human infa...
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BMC Medicine, 2020
Background How the brain develops accurate models of the external world and generates appropriate... more Background How the brain develops accurate models of the external world and generates appropriate behavioral responses is a vital question of widespread multidisciplinary interest. It is increasingly understood that brain signal variability—posited to enhance perception, facilitate flexible cognitive representations, and improve behavioral outcomes—plays an important role in neural and cognitive development. The ability to perceive, interpret, and respond to complex and dynamic social information is particularly critical for the development of adaptive learning and behavior. Social perception relies on oxytocin-regulated neural networks that emerge early in development. Methods We tested the hypothesis that individual differences in the endogenous oxytocinergic system early in life may influence social behavioral outcomes by regulating variability in brain signaling during social perception. In study 1, 55 infants provided a saliva sample at 5 months of age for analysis of individua...
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Science Advances, 2019
Maternal behavior affects epigenetic tuning of the oxytocin receptor in human infants.
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Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, 2018
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Scientific Reports, 2019
Sensitive responding to eye cues plays a key role during human social interactions. Observed chan... more Sensitive responding to eye cues plays a key role during human social interactions. Observed changes in pupillary size provide a range of socially-relevant information including cues regarding a person’s emotional and arousal states. Recently, infants have been found to mimic observed pupillary changes in others, instantiating a foundational mechanism for eye-based social communication. Among adults, perception of pupillary changes is affected by race. Here, we examined whether and how race impacts the neural processing of others’ pupillary changes in early ontogeny. We measured 9-month-old infants’ brain responses to dilating and constricting pupils in the context of viewing own-race and other-race eyes using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Our results show that only when responding to own-race eyes, infants’ brains distinguished between changes in pupillary size. Specifically, infants showed enhanced responses in the right superior temporal cortex when observing own...
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Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 2018
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PLoS biology, 2018
Altruistic behavior is considered a key feature of the human cooperative makeup, with deep ontoge... more Altruistic behavior is considered a key feature of the human cooperative makeup, with deep ontogenetic roots. The tendency to engage in altruistic behavior varies between individuals and has been linked to differences in responding to fearful faces. The current study tests the hypothesis that this link exists from early in human ontogeny. Using eye tracking, we examined whether attentional responses to fear in others at 7 months of age predict altruistic behavior at 14 months of age. Our analysis revealed that altruistic behavior in toddlerhood was predicted by infants' attention to fearful faces but not happy or angry faces. Specifically, infants who showed heightened initial attention to (i.e., prolonged first look) followed by greater disengagement (i.e., reduced attentional bias over 15 seconds) from fearful faces at 7 months displayed greater prosocial behavior at 14 months of age. Our data further show that infants' attentional bias to fearful faces and their altruisti...
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Infant behavior & development, Jan 21, 2018
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Bundesgesundheitsblatt, Gesundheitsforschung, Gesundheitsschutz, Jan 22, 2018
While the nutritional and physical health benefits of breastfeeding are well established, accumul... more While the nutritional and physical health benefits of breastfeeding are well established, accumulating research demonstrates the far-reaching psychological effects of breastfeeding on children and their mothers. Here, we provide a non-exhaustive review of the empirical evidence, showing that breastfeeding impacts children's brain, cognitive, and socio-emotional development. In mothers, research is presented indicating that breastfeeding influences mood, affect, stress, and maternal care. The current review aims to provide a broad overview of existing findings on the psychological effects of breastfeeding, highlighting the important role that breastfeeding plays across several dimensions of psychological functioning. We also discuss the potential mechanisms that may underpin the observed effects, provide a constructive commentary on the limitations of the existing work, and put forth some considerations when evaluating this line of research.
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Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2017
Enhanced attention to fear expressions in adults is primarily driven by information from low as o... more Enhanced attention to fear expressions in adults is primarily driven by information from low as opposed to high spatial frequencies contained in faces. However, little is known about the role of spatial frequency information in emotion processing during infancy. In the present study, we examined the role of low compared to high spatial frequencies in the processing of happy and fearful facial expressions by using filtered face stimuli and measuring event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in 7-month-old infants (N = 26). Our results revealed that infants' brains discriminated between emotional facial expressions containing high but not between expressions containing low spatial frequencies. Specifically, happy faces containing high spatial frequencies elicited a smaller Nc amplitude than fearful faces containing high spatial frequencies and happy and fearful faces containing low spatial frequencies. Our results demonstrate that already in infancy spatial frequency content influence...
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Neuropsychologia, 2017
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Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 2017
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Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2017
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Developmental science, Mar 6, 2016
Infants' perception of faces becomes attuned to the environment during the first year of life... more Infants' perception of faces becomes attuned to the environment during the first year of life. However, the mechanisms that underpin perceptual narrowing for faces are only poorly understood. Considering the developmental similarities seen in perceptual narrowing for faces and speech and the role that statistical learning has been shown to play for speech, the current study examined whether and how learning from distributional information impacts face identity discrimination. We familiarized 6.5-month-old infants with exemplars of female faces taken from a morphed continuum going from one identity to another. Using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we show that only infants who were familiarized with a bimodal frequency distribution, but not infants familiarized with a unimodal frequency distribution, discriminated between identities. These results are the first to demonstrate the influence of probabilistic information on infants' face identity discrimination, suggestin...
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NeuroImage, Jun 1, 2016
In the first year of life, infants' speech perception attunes to their native language. While... more In the first year of life, infants' speech perception attunes to their native language. While the behavioral changes associated with native language attunement are fairly well mapped, the underlying mechanisms and neural processes are still only poorly understood. Using fNIRS and eye tracking, the current study investigated 6-month-old infants' processing of audiovisual speech that contained matching or mismatching auditory and visual speech cues. Our results revealed that infants' speech-sensitive brain responses in inferior frontal brain regions were lateralized to the left hemisphere. Critically, our results further revealed that speech-sensitive left inferior frontal regions showed enhanced responses to matching when compared to mismatching audiovisual speech, and that infants with a preference to look at the speaker's mouth showed an enhanced left inferior frontal response to speech compared to infants with a preference to look at the speaker's eyes. These r...
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Papers by Tobias Grossmann