Neural correlates of tactile expectation in infancy

As adults, we can accurately predict the timing and location of an impending touch specified by a looming visual object (Clery et al., 2015, Kandula et al., 2015). The developmental origins of this adaptively important ability, likely underpinned by multisensory neurons representing peripersonal space, have not yet been investigated. To address this, we presented 4-, 8- and 10-month- old infants with visual stimuli either looming towards their hands or receding towards the background, followed by a brief tactile stimulus delivered on their hands at the expected time-to-contact of the visual looming stimulus. We recorded infants’ spontaneous brain activity during the stimulus presentation using scalp electroencephalography (EEG) and we measured their somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) in response to the touches. Preliminary results suggest that already at 4 months of life the tactile stimuli that have been preceded by a visual looming stimulus (i.e. anticipated touches) are processed differently from those that have been preceded by a visual receding stimulus. In particular, the SEPs showed a consistently larger amplitude of the potential in response to the anticipated vs non anticipated touches. However, this difference seems to disappear at 8 and 10 months of life. More complete results will be presented and discussed.