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H2020Doctoral network2019–2023

SAPIENS · Shaping the social brain through early interactions

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2019-01-01 → 2023-07-31
EU contribution
€4,068,233
Participants
18
Scheme
MSCA-ITN

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Results in brief

Shaping the social brain through early interactions

The first three years of life are particularly critical for children's long-term development, health and wellbeing, since core brain functions are formed during this period. These first years are also key for the emergence of developmental disorders. Identifying the mechanisms that act during early childhood to shape individual long-term social development is essential for improving the health and wellbeing of EU citizens, and has far-reaching consequences for social and educational policy. The SAPIENS ITN is approaching this problem from a new perspective by asking how early social interactions tune critical brain functions in early childhood. The specific scientific and technological objectives are to: 1.Develop novel methods to reveal the dynamics of early social interactions across different settings (at home and in the lab). We will take advantage of wearable, mobile technologies for measuring brain and behaviour to understand the structure of social interactions between children and parents. 2.Determine how the child drives the development of social interactions. We will conduct longitudinal analyses of existing datasets to identify key aspects of child functioning that drive typical and atypical long-term social development. 3.Determine how social partners (caregivers) shape the development of interactions. We will analyse how parental activity affects and promotes infant brain and behaviour development. We will also test how modifications of parental behaviour during early intervention may improve social brain and behaviour development in infants. 4.Determine how the interaction between child and caregiver shapes social brain development. We will measure how very early experiences drive emerging specialisation of social brain networks. We will also use advanced computational and statistical modelling to understand how multiple genetic and environmental factors shape social interactions and later social development.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

The first three years of life are critical for children’s long-term development, health and wellbeing, since core brain functions are formed during this period and the brain is much more vulnerable to adversity, which is key for the emergence of developmental disorders (autism, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder). Identifying the mechanisms that act during early childhood to shape individual long-term social development is essential for improving the health and wellbeing and has far-reaching consequences for social and educational policy. We propose that this key scientific problem cannot be solved without first understanding how early social exchanges tune critical brain functions in early childhood. Daily, repeated exchanges between infants and caregivers provide the substrate for the interacting influences of genes and the environment on brain development. By studying the micro-scale dynamics of early social exchanges we can revolutionise the understanding of macro-scale development of socially-relevant functions like theory of mind, language, attention, and emotion regulation. Our radically new approach puts social exchanges at the heart of brain development, which is sculpted through a complex ongoing cascade of interactions between the brain and its social environment. SAPIENS combines advances in ecological, mobile real-time brain and behaviour measurement, data modelling and artificial intelligence approaches to train a new generation of researchers in implementing these ground-breaking approaches to early social development. SAPIENS will generate revolutionary new tools for translating cutting-edge basic science into clinical diagnostic and treatment tools for developmental disorders, while engaging the public and delivering new public policy. By building on a strong intersectorial network of excellent research centres and industry, we will provide highly innovative and multidisciplinary training for young research leaders in developmental science.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

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Data: CORDIS, © European Union