Social thinking in the infant brain

An innovative collaboration between neuroscientists and developmental psychologists that investigated how infants' brains process other people's actions provides the first evidence that directly links neural responses from the motor system to overt social behavior in infants. The research will be published April 12 in Psychological Science , the peer-reviewed journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study involved 36 seven-month-old infants, who were each tested while wearing a cap that used electroencephalography, or EEG, to measure brain activity. During the experiment, each infant observed an actor reach for one of two toys. Immediately after, the baby was allowed to select one of the same toys. This procedure was repeated 12 times. Babies' brain activity predicted how they would respond to the actor's behavior.