Performance in eyeblink conditioning is age and sex dependent

PLoS One. 2017 May 18;12(5):e0177849. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0177849. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

A growing body of evidence suggests that the cerebellum is involved in both cognition and language. Abnormal cerebellar development may contribute to neurodevelopmental disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, fetal alcohol syndrome, dyslexia, and specific language impairment. Performance in eyeblink conditioning, which depends on the cerebellum, can potentially be used to clarify the neural mechanisms underlying the cerebellar dysfunction in disorders like these. However, we must first understand how the performance develops in children who do not have a disorder. In this study we assessed the performance in eyeblink conditioning in 42 typically developing children between 6 and 11 years old as well as in 26 adults. Older children produced more conditioned eyeblink responses than younger children and adults produced more than children. In addition, females produced more conditioned eyeblink responses than males among both children and adults. These results highlight the importance of considering the influence of age and sex on the performance when studying eyeblink conditioning as a measure of cerebellar development.

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Aging / physiology*
  • Aging / psychology*
  • Blinking / physiology*
  • Child
  • Conditioning, Eyelid / physiology*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Sex Characteristics*
  • Time Factors
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

We gratefully acknowledge the support from the Linnaeus centre Thinking in Time: Cognition, Communication and Learning at Lund University, financed by the Swedish Research Council (grant no. 349-2007-8695) (https://www.vr.se/). G. Hesslow was supported by grants from the Söderberg, Krapperup and Åhlen foundations, and the Swedish Research Council (09899). C. De Zeeuw was supported by grants from the European Research Council (ERC-adv), Dutch Council for Medical Research (ZonMw), and Fundamental Research (NWO-MaGW and NWO-ALW). A. Rasmussen was supported by grants from the EMBO (ALTF 88-2015), the European commission (LTFCOFUND2013, GA-2013-609409), Marie-Curie Actions, and the Swedish Research Council (2015-00276). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.