Impact of brain overgrowth on sensorial learning processing during the first year of life

Macrocephaly is present in about 2–5% of the general population. It can be found as an isolated benign trait or as part of a syndromic condition. Brain overgrowth has been associated with neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism during the first year of life, however, evidence remains inconclusive. Furthermore, most of the studies have involved pathological or high-risk populations, but little is known about the effects of brain overgrowth on neurodevelopment in otherwise neurotypical infants. We investigated the impact of brain overgrowth on basic perceptual learning processes (repetition effects and change detection response) during the first year of life. We recorded high density electroencephalograms (EEG) in 116 full-term healthy infants aged between 3 and 11 months, 35 macrocephalic (14 girls) and 81 normocephalic (39 girls) classified according to the WHO head circumference norms. We used an adapted oddball paradigm, time-frequency analyses, and auditory event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate differences between groups. We show that brain overgrowth has a significant impact on repetition effects and change detection response in the 10–20 Hz frequency band, and in N450 latency, suggesting that these correlates of sensorial learning processes are sensitive to brain overgrowth during the first year of life.