Biology subjects

Jessen, S.

Publications and source records attributed to Jessen, S..

7 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Capturing the developing brain in motion: A practical tutorial for recording mobile EEG in naturally moving children

This tutorial seeks to facilitate the use of mobile electroencephalography (EEG) in young children. Mobile EEG allows researchers to investigate neural correlates of behavioral and cognitive processes in ecologically valid settings. While mobile EEG has been widely adopted in adult research, studies applying it to freely moving children remain scarce. However, investigating neural processes during active behavior and in interaction with movement is indispensable for advancing our understanding of neural correlates of cognitive development in early childhood. Here, we provide a practical tutorial on the collection and preprocessing of mobile EEG data from children. Drawing on experience and data from a large-scale study with toddlers, we summarize key methodological considerations, discuss common challenges and practical recommendations, and present a preprocessing pipeline developed for developmental mobile EEG data. In addition, we provide example EEG datasets from naturally moving 18-20-month-old toddlers. We argue that incorporating mobile EEG into developmental cognitive neuroscience allows researchers to (i) investigate cognitive development in naturalistic environments, (ii) examine associations among bodily movement, neural activity, and behavior, and (iii) study samples that are difficult to reach with stationary research. HighlightsO_LIMobile EEG enables investigation of neural processes during active behavior C_LIO_LIMobile EEG in moving freely children comes with unique methodological challenges C_LIO_LIWe provide practical recommendations for developmental mobile EEG studies C_LIO_LIA dataset and preprocessing pipeline from a toddler mobile EEG study are provided C_LI

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Neural Tracking of the Maternal Voice in the Infant Brain

Infants preferentially process familiar social signals, but the neural mechanisms underlying continuous processing of maternal speech remain unclear. Using EEG-based neural encoding models based on temporal response functions, we investigated how 7-month-old human infants track maternal vs. unfamiliar speech and whether this affects simultaneous face processing. Infants (13 boys, 12 girls) showed stronger neural tracking of their mothers voice, independent of acoustic properties, suggesting an early neural signature of voice familiarity. Furthermore, central encoding of unfamiliar faces was diminished when infants heard their mothers voice and face-tracking accuracy at central electrodes increased with earlier occipital face tracking, suggesting heightened attentional engagement. However, we found no evidence for differential processing of happy vs. fearful faces, contrasting previous findings on early emotion discrimination. Our results reveal interactive effects of voice familiarity on multimodal processing in infancy: while maternal speech enhances neural tracking, it may also alter how other social cues, such as faces, are processed. The findings suggest that early auditory experiences shape how infants allocate cognitive resources to social stimuli, emphasizing the need to consider cross-modal influences in early development. Significance statementHow infants continuously process familiar social signals and how this familiarity shapes perception has remains unknown. Here we demonstrate that infants brains preferentially track maternal speech over unfamiliar voices, highlighting the early tuning of the auditory system to socially relevant signals. Moreover, the maternal voice modulates the neural encoding of concurrently presented faces without eliciting emotion-specific differences. These findings underscore the role of caregiver signals in shaping multisensory integration during early development.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2024

Muscle fiber proteomics reveals sex- and fiber type-specific adaptations to resistance training

Skeletal muscle hypertrophy is a hallmark of resistance training that positively impacts health and longevity. However, despite physiological differences between sexes and fiber types, the underlying proteome changes with resistance training have not been studied in a sex- and fiber type-specific manner. Herein, we show sex differences in the fiber type-specific proteome, predominantly in type II fibers. Following 8 weeks of resistance training, substantial remodeling of the human skeletal muscle proteome occurred in a sex- and fiber type-specific manner. Notably, type II fibers exhibited much greater adaptations across both sexes, whereas the main sex-difference was a greater remodeling of intermediate filaments in females. In addition, baseline abundance of proteins involved in translation was highly correlated with fiber hypertrophy, and differed between sexes and fiber types. Thus, translational capacity may partially explain differences in resistance training-induced hypertrophy. Our findings demonstrate key aspects of sex- and fiber type differences in muscle physiology and their contributions to resistance training-induced adaptions.

physiology↗

bioRxiv2023

Insulin and Exercise-induced Phosphoproteomics of Human Skeletal Muscle Identify REPS1 as a New Regulator of Muscle Glucose Uptake

Skeletal muscle regulates glucose uptake in response to insulin and exercise which is critical for maintaining metabolic health. We conducted a comprehensive phosphoproteomic analysis of skeletal muscle from healthy people in response to an acute bout of exercise or insulin stimulation by a hyperinsulinemic euglycemic clamp. Our analysis revealed 233 phosphosites regulated by both exercise and insulin of which most phosphosites were regulated in opposite directions. However, 71 phosphosites on 55 proteins displayed regulation in the same direction, indicating a potential convergence of signaling pathways. We identified the vesicle-associated protein, REPS1, to be phosphorylated at Ser709 in response to both insulin and exercise. REPS1 protein level and Ser709 phosphorylation were closely related to insulin-stimulated glucose uptake in skeletal muscle and required for maximal insulin-stimulated glucose uptake. Furthermore, we observed that insulin triggered phosphorylation of REPS1 Ser709 via P90S6 kinase (RSK) and is impaired in mice and humans with insulin resistance. Collectively, REPS1 is a convergence point for insulin and exercise signaling and a promising therapeutic target in insulin resistance.

biochemistry↗

bioRxiv2019

Maternal Odor Reduces the Neural Threat Response in Human Infants

AO_SCPLOWBSTRACTC_SCPLOWMaternal odor is known to play an important role in mother-infant-interaction in many altricial species such as rodents. However, we only know very little about its role in early human development. The present study therefore investigated the impact of maternal odor on infant brain responses to emotional expression. We recorded the electroencephalographic (EEG) signal of seven-month-old infants watching happy and fearful faces. Infants in two control groups exposed to no specific odor (control 1) or the odor of a different infants mother (control 2) showed the expected EEG fear response. Crucially, this response was markedly absent in the experimental group exposed to their mothers odor. Thus, infants respond differently to fear signals in the presence of maternal odor. Our data therefore suggest that maternal odor can be a strong modulator of social perception in human infants.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Can processing of face trustworthiness bypass early visual cortex? A transcranial magnetic stimulation masking study

As a highly social species, we constantly evaluate human faces to decide whether we can trust someone. Previous studies suggest that face trustworthiness can be processed unconsciously, but the underlying neural pathways remain unclear. Specifically, the question remains whether processing of face trustworthiness relies on early visual cortex (EVC), required for conscious perception. If processing of trustworthiness can bypass EVC, then disrupting EVC should impair conscious trustworthiness perception while leaving forced-choice trustworthiness judgment intact. We applied double-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to right EVC, at different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) from presentation of a face in either the left or right hemifield. Faces were slightly rotated clockwise or counterclockwise, and were either trustworthy or untrustworthy. On each trial, participants discriminated 1) trustworthiness, 2) stimulus rotation, and 3) subjective visibility of trustworthiness. At early SOAs and specifically in the left hemifield, orientation processing (captured by the rotation task) was impaired by TMS. Crucially, though TMS also impaired subjective visibility of trustworthiness, no effects on trustworthiness discrimination were obtained. Conscious perception of face trustworthiness (captured by visibility ratings) relies on intact EVC, while forced-choice trustworthiness judgments may not. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that trustworthiness processing can bypass EVC. For basic visual features, extrastriate pathways are well-established; but face trustworthiness depends on a complex configuration of features. Its processing without EVC and outside of awareness is therefore of particular interest, further highlighting its ecological relevance.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Quantifying the individual auditory and visual brain response in 7- month-old infants watching a brief cartoon movie

AO_SCPLOWBSTRACTC_SCPLOWElectroencephalography (EEG) continues to be the most popular method to investigate cognitive brain mechanisms in young children and infants. Most infant studies rely on the well-established and easy-to-use event-related brain potential (ERP). As a severe disadvantage, ERP computation requires a large number of repetitions of items from the same stimulus-category, compromising both ERPs reliability and their ecological validity in infant research. We here explore a way to investigate infant continuous EEG responses to an ongoing, engaging signal (i.e., \"neural tracking\") by using multivariate temporal response functions (mTRFs), an approach increasingly popular in adult-EEG research. N=52 infants watched a 5-min episode of an age-appropriate cartoon while the EEG signal was recorded. We estimated and validated forward encoding models of auditory-envelope and visual-motion features. We compared individual and group-based ( generic) models of the infant brain response to comparison data from N=28 adults. The generic model yielded clearly defined response functions for both, the auditory and the motion regressor. Importantly, this response profile was present also on an individual level, albeit with lower precision of the estimate but above-chance predictive accuracy for the modelled individual brain responses. In sum, we demonstrate that mTRFs are a feasible way of analyzing continuous EEG responses in infants. We observe robust response estimates both across and within participants from only five minutes of recorded EEG signal. Our results open ways for incorporating more engaging and more ecologically valid stimulus materials when probing cognitive, perceptual, and affective processes in infants and young children.

neuroscience↗