These studies are the projects that are open for family participation in the Baby Learning Lab. Below are brief descriptions of each study to help give those interested an insight into what our research is currently focused in. Please refer to our Publications page to see recent and past studies.
FNIRS during an infant’s naturalistic experiences (aka Exploration)
In this study, we use fNIRS recordings to investigate the neural components of naturalistic play in infants 4 months to 2 years old. We measure infants’ brain activity while they play with two toy types: those that are familiar to the infant, and those that are novel. We examine correlations between brain activity when infants are playing with the two different toy types, and explore neural activity during different events (i.e., when the baby is vocalizing, or looking at a particular object) during play. We know that play is an essential avenue of infant learning, and therefore infant development, however less is known about the neural underpinnings of infant learning during free play. Most research exploring infant learning through play utilize controlled experiments, which inherently limit the active role an infant holds in exploring and shaping their learning environment. In this study, we aim to examine infants’ neural responses during play in an infant-directed, naturalistic environment. The goal of this exploratory study is to provide insights into the neural components of naturalistic play during early development.
We aim to investigate the following questions:
1. What occurs in the infant brain during a naturalistic play session?
2. How do these neural responses change during object exploration – in particular, when the infant is playing with a familiar toy vs. a novel toy?
Lead Researcher: N/A
Research Assistants (as of April 2025): Catalina Shen, Jade McMillan, Kaatyaayani Singh, Dixie Santo, Aisha Sabry, Crystal Chung, Elizabeth Marsh, Gurnimrat Brar, and Tarin Shultana Oli Ahmed
Translation of short-term changes in infant perception into long-term developmental changes (aka Sprinkles)
In this study, the project consists of three eye-tracking and neuroimaging studies where 6- to 8-month-olds undergo training to learn that particular pictures and sounds predict the direction of motion of colourful dots. We first use eye-tracking to replicate a previous study that showed that the brief training alters motion perception. We then expand the findings to investigate what training experiences are necessary to make the change in perception persist across five weeks with the same infants. We then use neuroimaging to measure what neural mechanisms support this prolonged change in motion perception. Past work has shown that infants can quickly and flexibly adjust their perceptual systems as a result of their experiences. Work from Dr. Emberson’s team has recently shown that briefly training infants to learn that particular audio-visual cues will predict one direction of motion (leftward or rightward) of colourful dots is enough to alter their motion perception short-term. Motion triggers smooth pursuit eye movements, which are specialized, involuntary eye movements that track motion at its direction and speed, providing us with a measure of motion perception. The change in motion perception will be demonstrated by seeing if the audio-visual cue is sufficient to produce motion perception. The goal of the project is to (1) replicate previous findings from our team that learning triggers short-term change in motion perception, (2) investigate what experiences are necessary to make flexible, short-term changes in perception persist for extended periods in infants and (3) use functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to measure which neural mechanisms support this change.
Lead Researcher: Zahra Abolghasem
Research Assistants (as of April 2025): Rowah Gherian, Jotpreet Randhawa, Kyler Cyna, Irene Feng, Victoria Hong, Esha Bal, Nyomi Lo-Rolls, Shuang Shuang Li, Isabella Assaf
Development of large-scale neural networks during first years of life (aka Tiny Sparks)
In this study, we use fNIRS recordings to investigate the emergence of the fronto-parietal network in 8-month-old infants, examining the connectivity of different brain networks. We recruit a group of 8-month-old infants who will participate in the study for two visits: once to engage in a learning task and the other time for a resting state task. For both visits, we measure infant brain activity while infants watch one of the two videos. We examine correlations between brain activities. The goal of this study is to provide insights into the emergence of specialized neural networks in early infancy (8 months). To do this, we will look at the relations between brain activity during rest and during learning for 8-month-olds. These findings will (1) advance our understanding of the emergence of the fronto-parietal network at the very beginning of life, (2) advance our understanding of how the anatomy of the brain (measured with resting-state activity) informs the development of connections across the brain when infants are engaged in cognitive tasks, and vice versa, and (3) allow us to determine the generalizability of our predictive task to infants of 8-month old.
We aim to investigate the following question: What are the interrelations between task-based and resting-state connectivity at the age of 8 months?
Lead Researcher: Jingyun Zhu
Research Assistants (as of April 2025): Elisa Sierra, Annie Wang, Madison Yang, Iman Adanijo, Lucy Schoeffel, Dilnoor Cheema, Madhavi Shrimali