Schedule of Events | Symposia

Age-related changes in alpha and beta oscillatory dynamics during semantic processing in children and adolescents

Poster Session E - Monday, March 31, 2025, 2:30 – 4:30 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Zhiying Shen^1,2,3 (mike.shen@boystown.org), Anel Zhussubali⁴, Augusto Diedrich^1,2,3, Wai Hon Lee^1,2, Elizabeth Heinrichs-Graham^1,2,3; ¹Institute for Human Neuroscience, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Omaha, NE, USA, ²Center for Pediatric Brain Health, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Omaha, NE, ³Creighton University School of Medicine, Omaha, NE, ⁴Brown University, Providence, RI

Ample evidence supports a left-lateralized semantic cognition network with well-defined regions, but the spatiotemporal profile of these network hubs and how their dynamics change throughout development is still poorly understood. The present study aims to characterize the neural dynamics of the semantic network in a neurotypical, developmental sample of 7-15-year-olds. A total of 67 participants completed a semantic judgment task during magnetoencephalography (MEG), during which two words were auditorily presented in succession and participants were instructed to determine whether the words were semantically related. MEG data was preprocessed, coregistered with MRI, and transformed into the time-frequency domain. Significant oscillatory responses were source imaged using beamforming, and the effects of age and brain-behavior relationships were evaluated. We found age-related improvements in task accuracy, reaction time, and processing time. Significant oscillatory responses were found in alpha and beta frequencies shortly after the onset of the second word throughout a distributed left-lateralized network. Whole-brain correlations revealed stronger decreases in beta activity (i.e., more negative relative to baseline) with increased age throughout the left language network, including the middle temporal gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, spt, middle occipital gyrus, precuneus, and precentral gyrus. These age-related changes in neural activity were significantly related to language ability. We found that semantic processing is served by the development of beta dynamics in multiple regions in the semantic network. These data underlie the importance of beta activity in the development of language ability in youth, which may serve as an important biomarker for language dysfunction in pediatric clinical populations.

Topic Area: LANGUAGE: Semantic